Human Evil
by Seraph of Winters Past
Summary: This is the story of Mumen Rider's greatest failure, and the astonishing lengths to which he'll go to make things right. He's more alone than he'd hope to be in his pursuit of justice, and not everything is as it seems in this tale of murder, abduction, and cherry blossoms. (STORY COMPLETE)
1. Chapter 1

The following is a non-profit fan-based story and the author is unaffiliated with ONE, Shueisha, or Viz Media, who own the rights to _One-Punch Man_. Please support the official releases.

While not intended to take place at any specific point in the One-Punch Man chronology, "Human Evil" follows the events of the anime unless otherwise noted and makes specific references to events through the end of the first season. From there, it's considered to go off on a detour and do its own thing and may meander back to later canonical events if it feels like it.

Much like bicycles, the plot may not stay on the marked paths.

**^V^V^V^**

**:: HUMAN EVIL ::**

**by**

**Seraph of Winters Past**

**^V^V^V^**

**Chapter One**

"**Yes, They Really Make Buses Like That"**

I was there when Mumen Rider fell.

Of course, I happen to be in a lot of places and not necessarily the ones that you'd expect. It happens when you're... well, this isn't my story. This is just mine to tell. But where does one start to tell that story? It's... it's not as easy as you'd think. Do I start with him bleeding on the pavement as the cold rain punishes his failing body? Do I go further back to the day he first realized that it was within his power to change the world and became a hero, knocking over the first domino leading to tragedy?

Let's start early on a Wednesday, not long before the fall. Let's start when the sun's not that high in the sky but it's already scorching. It started off so well, with a chilly breeze and refreshing dew on the grass. Now the mercury's at 30 degrees Celsius – or about 86, if you're in the small portion of the world that still clings to the Fahrenheit scale – and it's rising. The power grid's going to overload and thousands will be left without air conditioning, and you must know what happens when things heat up. Here's a hint: in a closed system, when you increase the heat, you also increase the pressure.

It's simple thermodynamics. It makes automobiles and locomotives function with their pistons and internal combustion, but it does unpleasant things to humans. They boil and their emotions rise unchecked until they explode. Not... not explode into meat-chunks. We're still being metaphorical here. We're talking about violence and disorder. We're talking about unrest and discontent. Heat tends to remove inhibitions, washing away discretion and rationality with sweat. Gather a bunch of those people together into one place, ready to do something rash as they lose control, and humanity _breaks things._

That's why you need a metaphorical steam vent to relieve the pressure. You need something to bring things down below a simmer and quiet the discontent. You won't get that with the average hothead with a hero's certification, fighting to increase their rank and generally making things worse for everyone else in the process. And especially not with the eccentric supermen at the very top who neither know nor care about the average person.

But you'd get that with Mumen Rider.

Mumen Rider is a unique specimen in the Hero Association. Denying all opportunities to advance, preferring to stay in the lowest echelons where his meager abilities can do the most good, he does more good than many above him. Many welcome the advancement to B-class with intense relief, knowing that they no longer have to perform one act of public service a week to retain their certifications. Many in C-class struggle to meet the quota and drop out well before they can reach that point. Mumen Rider, though? If the man whose only ability is "Riding a Bicycle Really Well" goes one day without _five _good acts, then he's done something wrong. That's what he tells himself, anyways. It's a ludicrous standard that nobody else would even attempt after their first week on the job, and he's been doing it before the Association even formed.

Why, though? Why does he do these things? Maybe it's because if he does the little things that stop small problems, they won't grow into large ones. Maybe that's it, but it works. He's stopped so many robberies with a kind word, halted so many muggings by offering snacks and spare change, talked down so many jumpers from bridges, and saved so many lives from traffic accidents that he's become the biggest fish in a small pond, the pinnacle of C-class, and today's no different from any other.

"One for you," he says as the ice cream truck pulls away, handing an ice pop to an eleven-year-old boy who'd been ready to ride a bicycle through a grocery store window until Mumen Rider rolled up two minutes ago. He moves on to the second of four – the one with the winged helmet, who'd set up the ramp for the jump – and says, "And one for you, one for you, one for you..."

Then he stops, taking a moment to look at the treat in hand. It's styled after a human face with vanilla-white skin and feathered blueberry hair. He finally puts two and two together, looks at the packaging for the first time, and smirks. He asked the driver for five ice pops and didn't specify what kind, so of course he handed out the official _Hero Association Brand Sweet Snow on a Stick_, now available in all of your most recognizable and colorful superhero personalities. What better way is there to appreciate your favorite than to eat his or her face off of a stick? Amai Mask, whose visage Mumen Rider's currently staring at, must've milked the promotion for all that it was worth.

"Hey," Mumen Rider says, catching the first child's attention. He's about to shove the green-helmeted visage of a man with goggles down his gullet and now Mumen Rider's got a vested interest in this. Gently smiling in that disarming way that only comes out around kids, he asks, "Care to trade? No offense, but I'd prefer that I didn't go down a potty mouth."

"Buuuuust!" his three friends roar and the boy in question hangs his head in feigned shame. The boy in question singles out the brainy boy with a shark helmet and tells him, "Oh shut up, Squid!"

"Manners, Otto!" barks his older sister, who's already eaten all of Terrible Tornado's limey hair. She swipes the Mumen Rider pop from him and slides the Amai Mask replacement into his sweaty hands. Much indignant chewing of a superstar's face ensues, and things are peaceful for a little while.

Mumen watches a school bus pass by. It's unlike most of the ones you know: whereas some countries literally slap a yellow coat of paint on a prison bus and call it a day, sending all sorts of subliminal messages to children, Z-City takes a more interesting approach to shipping children off to school by shaping their buses after animals. It's not a yellow brick trundling down the street towards him, but an oversized corgi complete with ears on the roof and the hood sculpted into a canine face. Its cheeks are flushed red and it even makes a barking sound when the driver honks the horn, which he does every block or two. What's really important right now's that it's somehow even more fuel-inefficient than a regular prison transport bus with all of these protrusions and molded forms, but this has the equal and dramatic effect of blasting a really strong and invigorating breeze in all directions as it passes. Mumen's taken his trademark green helmet off while he treats the children and now he lets the cool air pass through his dark hair with a quiet and thankful sigh. "When you finish up, what are all of you going to do?"

"Go back to schoooooool," they mutter.

"Very good," the Cyclist For Justice tells them. "A proper education is the key to a successful future! Truancy is more of a serious crime than you'll know and can hurt your chances advancing to a decent high school."

"Yes, Mumen Rider," the children drone.

"I missed too many classes," he goes on to say. "I went, but I kept seeing bullies, and they kept beating me up, and I kept going to the nurse's office. First day of class, there were these two upperclassmen who called themselves the Uniform Rippers, and they... um..."

They're staring at him, and not in a good way.

"Ah, hah hah haaaah," he chuckles, rubbing the back of his head. "Just enjoy your sweet snow and go back to school."

He takes a moment to scan his surroundings. He's been still for too long and he's getting anxious. Sure, he's taking care of Wednesday Incident #9 and it's not even noon, but that's no reason to slack off. He's scanning for old ladies to escort across streets, kittens to pull down from trees, children to herd back to school, dogs running off their leashes, pieces of litter strewn about, cars parked by expired meters...

It's distressingly quiet. The old ladies are sitting inside by their fans and cats and avoiding the heat. He's herded the last of the children to their proper places. Nobody's stupid enough to take a dog out for a walk with blacktop so hot that it'd scald their paws. The closest thing to litter is a missing person poster on a telephone pole. And the parking meters? People have been disturbingly punctual about those lately now that the word's gotten out that someone's actually enforcing those.

Okay, that's not entirely true. Someone spent all week dropping coins into expired meters and nobody knows who it was. Honest, guv'ner.

_It's not that I want something bad to happen, _he tells himself. _Just... it's like mom used to say before she died. I only get nervous when nothing happens._

And for his patience, something happens.

It starts with something not quite a sound, but close to one. More of a dull susurration that moves underfoot in a sort of aimless way that doesn't seem right. The worst of it passes in an instant, but it remains on the edge of awareness for an uncomfortably long time: not enough to identify, but enough to tip him off that something's afoul. He's crisscrossed the city so many times and seen so many strange and deadly happenings that he recognizes the subconscious signs that all hell's about to break loose.

"Roll out," Mumen Rider says to the children. They stare up at him in confusion, but his eyes are hard on the distance and he's not exactly forthcoming with an explanation. "Be anywhere else and don't skip class again."

The boy with the winged helmet demands, "What do you-"

_**BOOM!**_

Mere words can't describe how loud it is! Sure, I could qualify it with decibels and describe what else happens at that volume, but that's no substitute for being at the murder of a quiet moment. Weighed against the silence proceeding it, it's utterly inconceivable that so few windows shatter and so few people are launched from their feet. You can't appreciate what it's like for the shockwave to blast the hot dust and steam into your face. You're unfamiliar with this kind of overpressure knocking the air from your lungs. The sensation of an afterwind drawing you back toward the blast's origin has to be experienced to be understood. You'll never know what it's like to have the blood vessels in your nose burst from the concussive force.

The youngest one – the one that they rag on hardest – has it worst. A missing person poster blows up against his face and blinds him right when he's trying to recover his balance. He tumbles to the ground clutching his ears in what may as well be a silent scream now that everyone's hearing has been blown to tinnitus. He never hits the concrete: Mumen Rider scoops him up and holds him on his feet until he's sure the boy's not going to keel over again. He starts to say something, realizes that it's pointless when he can't even hear himself speak, and picks out the origin of the disturbance.

It's not hard. He just has to wait for a human tide to plow into him. The impact does a better job of bowling him over than the shockwave and soon he's fighting to stand up again as a mass of kicking, stomping feet do their best to keep him down.

"Ow!" he cries unheard as someone plants a boot on his back and kicks off. "Agh! Get oOOF! Watch ouaaagh! Dang it! My knee! Urk!"

_I hope the kids got out!_

The pressure lets up just long-enough for him to spring to the side of the mob and find his bike and helmet fallen by the little grocery store. He snaps on his helmet and is about to mount up when he sees another group of scared and fleeing civilians running his way. He's got no way to know how many more are behind them or what shape the road's in. So, he decides to do one of those things that he's really good at: improvising.

"Justice _Climb!_' Mumen Rider shouts against the metallic whining in his ears, more to psych himself up than to warn anyone. He slaps his bike against his back, holding it by the toptube, and scales a fire escape ladder. He huffs and gasps, ribs sore from the beating he took on the ground, but he's an athletic beast who rides dozens of kilometers a day and he's built up the stamina to ascend five stories of external ladders and hit the roof ready to go.

"Here we go," he says as he scans his environment. A plume of smoke billows up in the distance and he's pretty sure that he's found his target. "Here we go, here we go, here we go...!"

**^V^V^V^**

"Oh no!" a little blond boy shouts as he dangles his sister's doll out the window. "Barbie can't take it anymore! She's gonna jump!"

"Give it back!" the girl cries, trying to force her way past him to grab the doll back. But he's almost twice her weight and he's got the literal upper hand, so he just holds her at arm's length while their parents try to call the police about the shaking.

The boy laughs. This is _way _too easy. "She's tried thirty jobs in the last year and she can't hold any of them down for more than a week! Life's not worth living!"

"I'm gonna tell mommy!" the girl shouts. She stamps her feet and glares daggers at her brother. "She'll take away your Playstation!"

There it is again. That susurration. That low rumble below hearing. It echoes somewhere in the inner ear and makes the floor shake so subtly and completely that you'd never notice it unless you were totally aware of your surroundings. It's building up to detonation, building up to the point where the world can't hold it. Building, building, building...

"Here it comes!" the boy says, fingers going slack. "The bitter end!"

Gravity starts to assert its influence over the doll. As though in slow motion, the hunk of plastic and polyester slips through his fingers and begins the terminal plunge. The sister tries to stop it, but it's too late! No power that she yet holds can arrest the fall.

But the air's full of power.

Supersaturated with unearthly force, it does all sorts of strange things. It crackles and murmurs. It rings with a high-frequency noise that only dogs and – for some inexplicable reason – star-nosed moles can hear. It rejects the laws of physics as we understand them and obeys new masters. Gravity no longer applies, and the little doll hangs in the air as though suspended by an invisible puppeteer. Now, the girl's young-enough to accept this without question and grab the doll out of the pregnant air, but the boy just stares slack-jawed and disbelieving of what he's seeing.

"How the flying f-"

And then the air explodes with a sound beyond description, beyond belief, beyond imagination! It bursts and ruptures, and the building leaps a whole ten centimeters from the ground. You may not think that's much but, when you're not firmly attached to anything, the heat of the moment can stretch it out a lot longer than that. The floor comes down and leaves just about everything suspended in air for the briefest of moments. For most, this isn't a problem: just a short stint as airborne specimens, and then it's back to the ground.

Unfortunately, the menacing little boy is leaning out the window when this happens...

The fall's more like thirty meters for him, which accounts for just under two and a half seconds. That's not even enough time for his sister to realize that he's gone. I'd say that his life flashes before his eyes, but that's not really how this kind of death works. Believe me, I've been there for a lot of them. Instead, what he's got is about two and a half seconds to contemplate his life choices. Your life only _really_ flashes before your eyes when you're really dying due to brain cells... no, no, you're not here for a biology lesson, are you? Let's just say that two and a half seconds is less time than he wants, but it's more than he can bear. Faster than he can believe, too slow to accept, the ground rises to meet him.

Unbelievably, he falls short.

A strong, gloved hand snatches him by the back of his shirt. His body keeps going at over sixty kilometers an hour and he gets a nasty case of whiplash when his clothing finally arrests his momentum like a really aggressive seatbelt. His brain smacks the inside of his skull and he blacks out for a moment, awakening to stars shooting through his vision. Everything's a dull and painful roar in his throbbing ears and his skin's stabbed by a million invisible needles. His stomach churns and he doesn't know how he's alive.

"Got you!" Mumen Rider shouts as his wheels slam against the gravel floor of a rooftop "I'm so sorry...!"

The Cyclist For Justice banks hard and slices a tight turn, spraying out a shredding sheet of gravel and dropping the boy in the fulcrum without stopping. Racing for the edge, he can only yell back, "Take the stairs and stay inside until everything stops shaking! _Ahhhhh-!"_

And then he's across an alley and dashing off towards the still-rising plume of smoke without another word and he's _gone_. The boy just looks around, dazed and senseless, trying to process the fact that he's not meat chunks and gore on the pavement.

Speaking of meat chunks, a lot of those are working their way up his throat now that he's got time to feel properly sick.

"_Blaaaarghgle!"_

**^V^V^V^**

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And when all you have is a bicycle, everything looks like a ramp. He doesn't do anything flashy, but he finds inclines and pedals off of them as hard as he can, launching himself over alleyways and hitting the tarred or pebbly roofs on the other sides hard. They don't slow him down. Not in any meaningful capacity, anyways. Muscles burning, eyes dead set on the smoke, he picks up his lost speed and powers faster so he can make the next jump.

It sounds reckless. It sounds dangerous. And it is, but it's not the suicidal endeavor that you'd think. Mumen Rider knows these streets like the back of his hand and he knows how wide each gap is, and he's got the insane knowledge of his own capabilities that only comes from a life spent on the edge. He's studied every map of the city with a magnifying glass and can tell you exactly how many stories tall each building stands, and he'll tell you what buildings have their cornerstone dates carved in Arabic numerals, which ones use Latin, which ones cling to Chinese, and then he'll tell you the year without blinking.

The point is that when physical ability is coupled with detailed cartography and favorable geography, rooftops are just another road. And when the streets are flooded with fear and bodies and wreckage?

Shortcuts.

**^V^V^V^**

Mitsubishi Tomoe's ears ring.

It's the first thing that she's really conscious of. Nothing's real but that ringing sound, like a really small bell that just won't stop. Her mother used to do this really neat trick with a silver bell where she'd flick it with her index finger and the thing would reverberate for over a minute. It's like that, but a lot louder and more piercing. And it hurts. Blast, it hurts...

It doesn't stay like a bell forever. Or... no, it just gets drowned out by something else. It stays strong for a while, but then this other sound – maybe a dog barking? – rises up to challenge and overtake it. Just like the ringing, it doesn't seem to end. Longer than any dog should manage, it just lets out this l—o—n—g and level howl that shows no sign of dropping off. No way should anything with lungs manage to go on for so long.

There's activity all around her. Tomoe is... she can't describe it because she's not really there yet, but she's surrounded by moving things. She falls back on metaphor, on a time when her family went to the park and she walked into the middle of a group of pigeons. They all stayed still for her for a really long time until her sister coughed and they all launched into the air like silvery rockets. The entire world was a cloud of flapping wings that left her giggling for hours. It's not exactly like that and she's not laughing now, but the sensations around her are_ kind of l_ike that.

Tomoe's baking. The air's so still and cloying despite that movement. The heat sticks up against her, pressing in like a living thing, like a kitten desperate for attention in the middle of the hot night forcing a furry neck and shoulder against her face. But a coldness emanates from within her. Surrounded by heat, she has none of her own. Maybe the heat wouldn't be so bad, but an existence right at the border of those two extremes is torturous.

And then something else enters her perception. It's a slow inhalation or something like it. She feels it more than she hears it, reverberating through all of her... body? She still has one of those, right? She feels all of herself shaking in the tiniest, most subtle way, but it grows in intensity and stillness until she feels about ready to burst. It blots out the bell, overwhelms the barking, pushes away the wings, and nullifies both heat and cold. It builds, builds, builds until it's the only thing left in the world, and she doesn't know how reality can take it without bursting.

The answer: wait three more seconds.

There's a catastrophic release of tension and a sound like the end of the world. It's so powerful that she's not even aware of half of it. Being half-conscious takes the edge off a little bit but what she gets is like being struck by a colossal hammer shaped to hit all of her evenly and simultaneously.

Suddenly Tomoe's back in the moment. Her eyes are open and everything's right as it can be under the circumstances. The ringing's a persistent whine at the edge of her hearing: tinnitus, the white noise in the aftermath of a huge sound. The rushing around her is her classmates and chaperones swarming about in desperation. The heat's from the muggy air of a late-spring day and the cold… Blast, she's not sure where that's from, but she feels really funny and something's _wrong _with her.

Everything's wrong. Gravity's not sitting right and she's trying her darndest to slip out of her seat, and the only thing holding her in place is her seat belt. Everything's askew. Literally askew, she realizes: the bus is cocked at a 45-degree angle, and her window's pointed downward at the smashed façade of a lingerie shop and she's staring straight into the vacant gaze of a mannequin garbed in the most impractical set of underwear that the eight-year-old's ever seen. And she's seen some really unorthodox stuff in her mother's closet while playing dress-up...

Her mind snaps out of the memory with a sharp and stabbing pain in her forehead. Her hands instinctively fly to her head and she stifles a cry, curling up in her seat in a languid way and wincing. It comes away hot and sticky and red. _Bloody._ She looks down at herself and sees half of her white blouse stained just as deep a red as her skirt and the realization kicks in.

_I was in a crash._

Her head jerks sideways and her wide eyes take in the scene. Her classmates are screaming and shouting, cut and bruised in uniforms as messy as hers. The adults are struggling to maintain order, struggling to open the doors, struggling to kick open the windows.

Professor Fujita's not moving. He's an island of stillness amidst all of this. He's cradling a young boy named Gorou in his arms, holding him close and tight despite the boy's struggles. Tomoe's the only one who notices. She doesn't get why the professor doesn't say anything for the longest time. She doesn't get why Gorou's struggling to escape him so mightily. Then she sees the glassy look in the professor's eyes and how slow the blood's dripping from a hundred puncture wounds on his neck and shoulders. Her eyes finally lock in on the aluminum tube protruding from his ribcage, formerly supporting the now-crumpled seat in front of them. It would've impaled the boy if not for the professor and Tomoe's eyes go wider and her breaths come shallow and ragged as the thoughts sink in. It's her first time seeing death in person.

_What happened? _She asks herself again and again, staring at the lifeless body and the boy trying to escape its clutches. _What happened?! __**What happened?! WHAT HAPPENED?!**_

"Get back from the window!" Professor Moritsu shouts, wrenching her back into the moment. There's a fearful look in his dark eyes that only seem larger and wilder when framed by his pale skin and grey-white hair. He's pushing children back and pulling at his coworker, shouting, "Back! Back!"

Now she's curious. Her gaze darts towards the windows and her immediate reaction isn't horror but bewilderment. The massive face of a corgi stares back at her, grinning stupidly despite the situation around it. She's dumbfounded, wondering what's so funny.

_I rode a Corgi Bus._

The face is off on its own. It's lying half-cocked on the ground, resting against a light post, and it's utterly lifeless. That's when she recognizes it as the same face formerly festooned upon the hood of the bus and she notices the wreckage strewn about what looks like an intersection. So that's what that long howl is: the horn's stuck on.

Angled upward the way that side of the bus is, she can't discern a whole lot about the street itself but she sees the roofs of a few cars smashed in and everything's covered in dust and broken glass. Smoke's billowing out of a few cars or something, or whatever it is that's burning, but Tomoe doesn't get why Moritsu's trying to get everyone back from the windows. It's not like any of the other cars are going to blow up. She's only eight but even she knows that things don't randomly blow up like they do in the movies.

And then she notices the giant freaking monster.

It's five meters tall and it's made of hands. Literally, _made of hands._ Some are smaller than hers and some are her father's size. And then you've got some that are _the size of her father._ There's no making sense of it or figuring out how it works. It doesn't have a front or back, it's just... hands. Hands, hands, hands for days. Hands for them, hands for you, hands for all the good little boys and girls. Give her a hand: she tried her best. Speak, hands, for me! It half hand-walks, half hand-springs across the street and towards the broken and miserable remnants of the school bus and suddenly Tomoe knows why Moritsu's trying to get everyone away from the windows.

_How does one even miss that?!_

Everyone's heard of the monsters. Everyone's heard of the mysterious beings on the rise: in the last three months alone, there've been more monster attacks than there'd been in the previous three years combined. Something's drawing all the monsters out of the dark places of the Earth – or, worse, creating them faster – and nobody's got a reason why. Still, Tomoe never thought that she'd see one in person. And if she did, she never thought that she'd be in the line of fire.

But then, this day's been nothing like what she imagined it would be. It's just her imagination, but it seems for all the world like that monster's taking a special interest in her specifically and she can only stare slack-jawed and terrified as the monster closes the gap with frightening speed. She expected to go look at paintings and statues with the rest of her classmates. Now she's going to get eaten by a monster.

Eaten by _hands_.

_Somehow._

Now, this is a tiny detail. It's something that she should never have noticed, and she's not even sure that she did. But, as her mind reels and her eyes fall upon the many-handed monstrosity, she notices that the light dims slightly. It's like something's moved in front of the sun, but not so totally that it's completely blocked out. A very small, very inconsequential shadow falls across Tomoe, and she's in just the right position and angled just the right way to see the rooftop of the building behind the monster.

Something falls out of the glare of the sun. Something man-shaped. Something in black clothing, padded with brown sporting gear and topped in a striking green helmet.

Something about to hit a monster from five stories up with a bicycle.

"_**JUSTICE CRAAAAAASH!"**_

**^V^V^V^**

**Author Notes**

_(Originally uploaded on Saturday, April 13th, 2019)_

I'm also not affiliated with Nickelodeon, which owns _Rocket Power_. Just saying.

In doing my research for this story, I discovered the wonder that is the Japanese school bus. My parents always drove me to school when I was a kid, but I think that I'd have actually volunteered to take the bus if it was literally designed to look like a tiger or rocket ship. If I have one thing to tell you in the wake of this introductory chapter where gravity goes on a field trip, Mumen Rider hops rooftops, and I nonchalantly murder at least one person in a car crash, it's that you should do an image search for Japanese school buses. As an American, I feel cheated.

But hey. While I've got you here, I guess that I should say a few more things. First off, this isn't going to be a very long story. At least, in terms of number of chapters. I did a really detailed outline that's longer than this chapter, but things change in execution and I tend to go into a lot more detail than is strictly necessary because it lets me bring up some interesting perspectives on a bizarre scenario. My intention was six chapters but Chapter One started getting a lot longer than I anticipated, so I've cut it in half and I'm going to post the rest as Chapter Two. So… right now, the goal's seven chapters. I should be so lucky...

Secondly, this chapter was originally going to start with Mumen Rider escorting an elderly lady across the street, but I scrapped it in favor of the ice pops because it actually fit the character (and theme) more. I also couldn't see him taking more than a page to finish the action and get the necessary exposition in. On one hand, the new approach means that you have longer to get to the action. On the other hand, you wouldn't get Mumen Rider, Terrible Tornado, or Amai Mask ice pops. In the balance, I think that we all came out ahead.

Lastly, while I don't have an update schedule, I'm going to try to post every week or two. I've succeeded at NaNoWriMo several times, so I'm no stranger to pushing out content regularly. I also don't plan to start another story until after I finish this one. Back when I first started writing here, I made the mistake of branching out into too many stories, losing interest in some, and just never finishing because I split my focus too broadly. If nothing else, I'm more focused than I used to be.

So, until next time, farewell! Reviews are always welcome.

(_Edited on Monday, August 19th, 2019)_

I've occasionally gone back and made some alterations to the story after I uploaded a chapter. Usually, it's because I notice a typo and rush in to fix it. As I started reformatting the story to upload to Tumblr, I not only found some more typos but a few issues along the way. Some phrasings were awkward, for instance, and a few things were either inconsistent or don't match up completely with what happens later on. Some things that I only thought of later would work better with foreshadowing and I figured out a few subtle ways to slip them in.

I really doubt that anybody's going to come back and read this story once they've finished it the first time, so I doubt that this note is going to mean much since nobody who's reading this saw what I went back and changed. Everyone actually reading this note would never know that anything was ever different. I guess that I'm just doing this for the record, to make no secret of the fact that a couple of new things retroactively slipped in but I'm not really changing the story. I thought about adding a stinger to this chapter since it's pretty much the only chapter without one, but I decided that it was a little too much. But hey: now I've got most of the first chapter to a sequel written out.


	2. Chapter 2

The following is a non-profit fan-based story and the author is unaffiliated with ONE, Shueisha, or Viz Media, who own the rights to _One-Punch Man_. Please support the official releases.

**^V^V^V^**

**:: HUMAN EVIL ::**

**by**

**Seraph of Winters Past**

**^V^V^V^**

**Chapter Two**

"**The Blond Bomber"**

There are times when Mumen Rider thinks that he's made a terrible mistake.

Granted, that happens every morning. Burning muscles and stinging bruises wrench him from his dreams and he desperately wants to curl back up and bury himself under a warm blanket and drift back to sleep. But once the sun peaks through the slats of his window, a damnable little voice in his head grows louder by the moment.

"_Look out for the other guy."_

It was a lesson drilled into his head during driving school. It takes two to make an accident, and it can't happen if you deny the other driver the chance to hit you. The lesson's stuck long after the authorities confiscated his license and motorcycle. People can't get hurt if someone's there to watch out for them. It applies to so many things beyond vehicles and traffic.

Every morning, he throws off his bedsheets, downs some ibuprofen, and straps on his safety gear. He asks himself what happens if the person in the wrong place at the wrong time isn't as observant as he is and how many people would get hurt if he wasn't there.

Every morning, he hits the streets again on his aluminum and fiberglass steed and looks out for the other guy. His bones ache and his joints throb from years of abuse. He's not even 30 and he's already falling apart, but that's what the ibuprofen's for. Live fast, die young, and hope that the meds last long enough.

It works. It saves lives. It's shocking what kinds of things you'll find at the crack of dawn. What's really shocking is the number of jumpers: people who want to take solace in one last sunrise on a bridge or roof before letting gravity end everything. And it's shocking just how many of them Mumen Rider can talk back from the edge. The truth is, he can't ever really know what goes through their heads: he just tells them why he lives, and why he loves life, and why the jumper has so many reasons not to go through with it. No matter how hard he tries, he can't conceive of anything so horrible that it would drive him to take the plunge.

Today is not like most mornings.

"_**JUSTICE CRAAAAAASH!" **_he screams, not even knowing what he's done until he realizes that the ground – and a monster made entirely of hands – is rushing up at him disturbingly quickly. He saw the monster going for the bus and had to do something, and it takes him another moment to recognize the fact that he has no idea what he's going to do next. In the short time allotted him, three thoughts come to mind.

Thought Number One: _Son of a gun, I'm about to die._ It's an appropriate thought considering the circumstances, and he doesn't have enough time to come to grips with his mortality. This leads to...

Thought Number Two: _How am I going to stick this landing?_ He's got to avoid snapping his neck followed by literally every other bone in his body. It's the kind of question that you usually ask before launching yourself off a roof, but today's just one of those days.

Thought Number Three: _I'm so freaking dead oh crap oh crap oh crap oh crap!_ It's more or less the same as Thought Number One, but it's a lot more forceful because he still hasn't figured out the answer to Thought Number Two and the ground's gotten an awful lotcloser.

The monster turns to face him. At least, that's what Mumen Rider guesses that it does considering the lack of a face. Maybe it just repositions itself for a better attack on the Corgi Bus, he doesn't know. Whatever the reason for it, it gives Mumen Rider an idea and he's got just enough time to do something about it: he yanks up on the handlebar and kicks down hard on the pedals. This is going to hurt everyone involved, but he hopes that it hurts the monster more.

A big force spread out over a big area has a little impact because it's been diluted. All of that force applied to a small area is only going to affect that small area, but it's going to do a lot of damage to it. And a bicycle with rider descending at highways speeds, projecting all of its kinetic energy onto a single wheel? It doesn't matter that it's coated in rubber: he's turned himself into an oversized hammer of justice and he's bringing it all down on a soft target with enough energy to punt a metric ton almost two stories straight up.

The resulting sound is sickening. The creature's made of countless hands, and hands are made of so much bone. There's a tremendous series of cracking noises and Mumen Rider sinks uncomfortably deep into the beast that almost seems to fold in on itself like a trampoline around a cannonball. Mumen Rider feels this horrid jarring in his knees and elbows and he swears that he's a few centimeters shorter due to his spine compressing, but it's nothing compared to what the monster's going through.

"_**SCREEEEE!"**_

Where the sound comes from, he's got no idea. Is there a mouth somewhere in the middle of all those hands? All he knows is that the thing's screaming and if anything's going to get its attention, he's done it.

_Now what?!_

Once again, Mumen Rider hasn't thought that far ahead. The monster gives him a head-start on the process by flailing about angrily and painfully, launching him a good five meters back. The cyclist tumbles to a stop against the undercarriage of an overturned minivan. He loses track of the bike, but hey: that's a problem for later, and he's at least survived the impact. He's trying to get over and move past that fact and he's doing a pretty terrible job of that right now.

"Ughk... ghk...!" He sucks down air and sees everything double. His helmet stopped his skull from cracking open like a ripe melon, but his brains are all knocked around and he's probably concussed. That's a more serious injury than you'd think, but not as serious as what happened to the monster.

It's staggered. Almost half of its body isn't working. Dozens of hands lie limp on one of its flanks and the top of its spherical outline is dented in. Rivulets of blood trickle down from the impact site and it's drawn in on itself, clutching at the wound with some of its hands while the others strike out as damaged and confused nerves fire chaotically. Faceless though it may be, its body language just screams of pain. Pain that he's caused. If that thing feels pain the same way that Mumen Rider does...

_I am so sorry, _he thinks. _I am so, so sorry._

Glass shatters.

Children scream.

That damnable barking finally ends.

"Get the children out!" a man shouts from inside the wrecked bus. Mumen Rider can hear it past the avalanche of blood rushing through his temples and that fact mildly surprises him. "Get them out!"

A man with jet black hair rises into view, clambering out of a window and pulling a young boy out after him. They're both dressed in white-and-red shirts and red-and-red trousers and red-and-white-and-red-and-red ties, which is a lot more red than Mumen Rider thinks is right. It's only when he notices the red dripping down their barren arms that he realizes that it's not a fashion choice.

The monster turns its good side toward the bus. The man and boy freeze in place, staring at the monster like it's the end of the world. They don't even breathe. They just lock the closest thing that passes for gazes with it, eyes wide as saucers, and hope that it doesn't move closer.

It does.

"No, no, no!" Mumen Rider gasps. Despite the floaty feeling of his limbs and the terrible ringing in his ears, he forces himself back to his feet and starts screaming at the thing, "Hey! I'm over here! The guy who messed you up is right over here because you probably deserved it! Look at me I'm...!"

It turns its good side towards him.

_Alright, _he tells himself. _Phase One of my master plan is a success. Did I have a Phase Two, or was that the part with a bunch of question marks followed by "Profit"? I've got no idea, but I should probably be somewhere else right now. New plan! Get on the Justice Bicycle, engage Riding-Out-Of-The-Saddle-Mode, and..._

He looks around.

_Where the heck did my bike go?!_

It was there a moment ago! He jumped off the roof, hit the monster still riding it, lost his grip, got flung pretty far, hit the car... yeah, there's the problem. The thing's probably orbiting _Venus _by now, judging by how hard the beast must've hit the bus.

The monster lunges.

Mumen Rider runs for it. His legs quiver like jelly and his lungs burn but he employs that grit and determination that everyone knows him for and he powers on like the world's fastest inebriated sprinter. He doesn't really have a destination in mind, but anywhere's fine so long as it's away from the bus and the monster. That gives him a lot of options, but one's easier said than done because even though hands aren't really designed for running, the monster's somehow making it work. The growling and screaming of the many-handed monster grows louder by the moment and that's both really reassuring and really terrifying.

_Think, _Mumen Rider tells himself. _Think! Where can you go that this thing won't follow, Tanaka? There's got to be some way to bring it on a wild goose chase long enough to save everyone and not die in the process! I like living! I've spent all my life doing it! I'd like to continue doing it if at all possible, please!_

The hissing and roaring fall behind. Mumen Rider's too distracted to notice it. He doesn't question the twisting and groaning of metal. He just notices the still-flashing neon light above an otherwise nondescript door on a brownstone building not much different from all the others along the street. Once a really cheap townhouse, it got so cheap that a developer bought out the tenants on the bottom floor and converted all of their homes into street-level shops. This sign in particular flashes with the promise of salvation.

"**CHEAP CHEAP HI-DEF NAIL SALON DELUX MANICURES"**

_Perfect! _ Mumen Rider slants his run towards the front door. Is it a safe house? As a converted brownstone, it's got really small front windows which should make entry for the five-meter-tall mound of hands somewhat problematic. _Yeah, you can work the handle, but can you fit in the front door, buddy? And I'm pretty sure that "Manicure" is another term for "Torture" in whatever language Hand Monsters speak...!_

"_**HNUFF!"**_

A shadow falls across Mumen Rider. Twisted metal and ringing glass sing out behind him and it's catching up fast. Then there's a tremendous rush of wind and he's reeling around on the ground again before he knows it.

_**CRASSKH!**_

There's a shower of pebbles and glass and a cloud of choking dust and this terrible roar in his ears again. Sense and understanding take a brief detour to some other place before coming back and helping Mumen Rider come to grips with what just happened.

The door of the nail salon is now a car.

Not just any car, but a luxury sports car with a convertible roof. It's hard to miss thanks to the brilliant red paint job and the twin white racing stripes running down the now-crumpled hood. Mumen Rider always wanted one of those as a kid before discovering the joy of motorcycles, so it's kind of a shame to see one hurled into a building so hard that it's now a permanent part of the architecture. It also doesn't bode well for him.

The beast lunges again. This time, Mumen's not fast-enough to his feet to get out of the way. He starts rolling over but his legs are even more unresponsive than before and his hands aren't much better. The beast presses down on him with almost as much weight as the car it just threw and it's pretty much game over after that. Hands press down on his ankles and wrists and hands press down on his arms and legs and hands press down on his chest and torso and hands hands hands _hands_ finally wrap around his neck and they all start _squeezing._

He can't scream. He can't even gurgle. Mumen Rider's eyes bulge and that's about the only part of him moving under the horrific pressure. A lot of thoughts pass through his head, the first of which is that he really, _really_ should've stayed in bed and let the other guy watch out for himself because it's not like anybody's looking out for him right now. Sure, it's a moment of weakness. Given his circumstances, he doubts that anybody would hold it against him. _It's not like I'm going to live long-enough to tell anybody!_

And then everything just kind of... stops.

"_**AWURAUGH?"**_

The monster's confused exhalation drags him back into the moment. Its hands are still pressed tight over almost every centimeter of his body, but there's this diminished quality to it. Like it's not actively trying to throttle him to death and it's doing it in a kind of ambivalent way. He can't see worth a damn because the thing's still got hands all over his face, but he hears – no, _feels _– the world shaking around him in a way that can't possibly come from having a few tons pressing down on him. It's too violent for that. It's too subtle for that. It's far too familiar for that.

This unreal sensation of power and force builds up in the world around him. Before it was like Mumen Rider was on the periphery: now it feels like he's in the center of it all. He feels it in his bones and every bit of soft tissue in his wracked body. It grows in intensity until he feels like he's going to burst apart. It builds, builds, builds until the air can't take it anymore. Finally, it doesn't.

Being smothered under the belly of the beast doesn't make the sound any quieter. In fact, right at ground zero, it seems louder than ever. Words can't describe just how loud it is, and the feeling of such titanic forces pounding the world in and around him beggars human understanding and it takes him far too long to realize what happened.

Everything goes white. Buried in darkness as he was, it takes him a while to reacquire his surroundings and process the fact that he's just looking at daylight. Daylight and a plume of smoke and rubble as the aftermath of an explosion blasts out around him, followed by a rain of pebbles and glass. The ground just next to his feet – the ground on which the bulk of the monster was resting – is effectively _gone._ Now it's a crater from which smoke billows furiously.

He tilts his head up. The monster's lodged in the brownstone's façade and it's obviously hacked off even without a face to betray it. It's writhing and snapping about, it's making all kinds of angry noises, and it's about to hurl itself back down at the crater. It's forgotten Mumen Rider entirely, and now the Cyclist For Justice realizes that the monster's never been the source of the day's booming phenomena.

"Let's try that again!" a man shouts. He climbs out of the crater covered in dust and dirt and trickling with blood. His costume – a blue-and-white striped affair with an iridescent cape – is dull and battered from an extended underground battle, but it still jogs a memory in our hero.

_Blond Bomber, _Mumen Rider thinks. _Class B, Rank 17. Joined the Hero Association three weeks ago. Skipped Class C entirely due to his tremendous psychic abilities. Almost flunked the written exam, though._

Mumen Rider makes it his business to know about all of the newbies in the hero business. Some older heroes like crushing them to secure their own place in the rankings, but Mumen Rider's never really cared about ranks and likes encouraging the rookies. He also likes knowing which ones are going to cause trouble. Some rising stars like Caped Baldy and Demon Cyborg mean well, but there's a depressing number of myopic people flooding the rosters lately and he can't count on everyone playing nice.

So far, the monster's thrown a few cars around and attacked a school bus. In fighting it, Blond Bomber's pretty much turned half the city upside-down.

_Blast, this is going to suck._

"_**SCREEEE!"**_ the monster roars in that distinctive way. Its whole body undulates, nearly half of its hands grip the stone façade so hard that it cracks, and it cannonballs towards its attacker like a fleshy bolt of lightning.

"You got the jump on me before!" the blond man shouts. He clenches his fists and the air ripples around him like the interior of a pottery kiln opened early. Already the world's reeling from the preamble to another telekinetic assault. "That's not going to happen again! _Take this!_"

Something like a brick wall the color of air slams into the monster and the lingering dust and smoke are smashed away in the psychic release. The monster's punted back and Mumen Rider _feels _the thing's bones breaking as its scalene body pulverizes the stone facing of the building. Without looking at the downed cyclist, Blond Bomber rushes out of the crater and readies another attack as the monster screams and attacks again.

That's just as well. Mumen Rider can't do anything in this fight other than get in the way. He's got to trust that the newcomer's going to take care of this. As the world starts convulsing behind him, Mumen Rider forces himself to his feet and runs back towards the school bus. There, at least, he can make some difference.

A symphony of destruction plays out behind him. Drums of pounding stones, cymbals of breaking glass. Flutes of whistling bricks and choruses of collapsing girders. There's so much texture and richness to the song of ruin that it puts the greatest mortal musicians to shame and he _really _wants to change the station. It's not his fight. Maybe he should pay attention because it could come back to involve him again at any moment, but that's about the fourth from last thing from his mind. He's focused on two things right now: getting the passengers out of the bus and whether or not his bike's actually landed yet.

"Look, it's Mumen Rider!" one of the students shouts. She points and most of the children turn his way. The reaction's mixed. Some gasp in surprise at his haggard appearance. One boy with the bloody impression of an embracing pair of arms across his shirt looks like he's about to faint: from blood loss or adulation, Mumen Rider's got no idea. A few try to find their phones so they can take their pictures with him. He ignores those: plenty of time for pictures once the dust settles and everyone's not in immediate risk of dying. He's focused on the fact that everyone present looks like they're going to walk out of this alive, and he doesn't know if that's because everyone made it out or he's just seeing the ones who did.

He turns his attention to the men. They're trying to keep everyone together in a group a good three meters from the bus, making impromptu bandages and splints from ripped clothing and shredded backpacks. "Is anyone left?" he demands of a man with shock-grey hair and a mole on his cheek. "Has everyone gotten out?"

"Everyone who's still alive," the man says, taken aback. "But-"

"Everyone _still alive?_"

"Y-yes!" The man says defensively. "All of the children are out and-"

Mumen Rider curses under his breath. The man's just not getting the picture. You help who you can, but you don't stop pulling out bodies because they've stopped moving. That's a great way to miss someone.

"You!" Mumen Rider says, pointing to one of the other two adults in the area. If the first one and his colleague look like teachers, then this third one looks like the driver. "Get these children to safety! The monster's currently occupied north of here: head south until you find a safe area and call the police! I'm going to sweep the vehicle."

He doesn't even think about it. He doesn't wait to see if they've obeyed him. One moment he's giving orders and the next he's inside the cabin. It's just like jumping off of the roof: it just happens. Just like the jump, the destination isn't pretty. Sure, you've got the standard aftermath of a crash in the form of shards of glass and torn metal, but there's just so much blood. A puddle here, a trail there, a handprint ahead...

His eyes immediately focus on the pale skin of a man curled up tight in his seat. Mumen Rider's there in a flash, pushing debris aside and navigating the askew and uneven aisle with new and frantic urgency despite his condition.

"Sir!" Mumen Rider says. He reaches out a hand and shakes him by the shoulder. "Sir?"

The man's head lolls around in a truly ghastly way. It's a tired cliché but, to Mumen Rider, it's like watching a marionette without strings. There's no pushback or resistance. The man's head bobs around and the only thing keeping it from falling off is snapped vertebrae. And when he looks into those eyes... nothing. They're empty. Lifeless. There's no shine to them. When Mumen Rider stares in, nothing stares back out.

"Oh, blast it all," he breathes, finally noticing the aluminum pipe sticking out through the man's ribcage. Despite the grievous wound, he's not bleeding anymore and what's there has begun to darken and congeal. Mumen Rider pulls off a gauntlet and lays his hand across the man's cheek. He sighs: the skin's already cold. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry..."

For a moment, Mumen Rider thinks that he was wrong to question the judgment of the man outside. This one is totally and utterly beyond saving. Then he notices a patch of white reflected off the remnants of the window. He turns around and sees a young girl buckled into the opposite seat, crumpled against the wall like yet another marionette. Her white blouse is half-red from blood and her feet are tucked up under her legs like she'd been trying to curl up and be as small as possible. With everything going on, he couldn't blame someone for turtling up and trying to shut out the world if he wanted to.

_No, no, no, _Mumen Rider thinks. _Not another one! Not someone that young…!_

He crosses the aisle and pulls the girl's head away from the window and wall. He takes in every little detail. He takes in her upturned nose and pale lips, her alabaster-white skin and her dark brown hair. But most of all he takes in the gash across her forehead. The nearly-clotted, ugly thing just below her hairline, seeping blood.

"Come on," he tells her, pulling open her right eyelid and staring at her brown eye. "Please, please don't do this to me, please..."

The pupil contracts in the light.

"Yes!" His hands fly to the buckle and he releases her from her seat, scooping her up in his arms and hauling her up the aisle. The pale man somehow goes even paler when he sees the girl in the cyclist's arms, and he can't even find words. Mumen Rider gives him some. "What was that about getting everyone out?"

He looks around and notes with some satisfaction that the other children and adults are gone. The pale man's the only one left with him, so at least the driver's done his job. Mumen Rider turns his attention back to the girl and notices that she's stirring. This fact's so encouraging that he misses the distinctive buildup of pressure in the air around him and he hands her off to the man with an authoritative, "Now get a bandage on her head! I'm going back to find more!"

He never makes it.

"Did you skip on Leg Day, bro?!" the newcomer's voice roars out followed by the sound of something huge and handy smashing into the rooftop directly above them. The face of the building utterly gives way. Too fast to believe, a few tons of monster, rock, and rubble start falling directly at the three of them.

He acts without thinking. He acts on instinct. He acts on that most human instinct: the need to save the most at the expense of the fewest. Mumen Rider is just one man and there are two humans next to him: humans too slow to react. He lunges, impacting the teacher as hard as he possibly can. With deceptive strength multiplied by urgency, he makes a better showing than anyone would ever guess him capable of making. He hurls the pair far and away. He hurls them out from the building, out from the hailstorm of rubble, out from Professor Fujita's grave, out from the danger.

And then the rocks hit.

**^V^V^V^**

Seconds?

Minutes?

Hours?

It doesn't matter.

Everything hurts.

Everything's flush with white fire and stabbing needles. Weight, sharpness, burning, sickness... he feels it all. Mumen Rider feels it everywhere except his legs. _That _worries him. _That _tells him that something's really wrong.

His eyes open and there's grey powder covering everything. Rocks, automobiles, bodies... even the _dust _is covered with dust, and that shouldn't even be possible. Most pressing of all, his _lungs _are coated. As though realizing this actually means something, he sputters and coughs and tries to clear out his throat to little avail.

_Then _it gets hard to breathe.

_What... what happened...?_

Mumen Rider sees two bodies lying in the middle of the street. His gut reels and his mind fills with all these sickening and terrible thoughts. After everything he's done today, after all the effort he's gone through, _not that._ For all his work, don't let it be in vain!

The man stirs.

He slowly pushes himself up to his knees, shaking dust off of himself.

The girl hacks and wheezes, but she doesn't get up.

"I'll... I'll be right... there..." Mumen Rider pushes off against the ground. Tries, anyways. Flat on the ground, face pressed hard against the dusty blacktop, he tries to pull himself forward. The Cyclist For Justice attempts to make some kind of difference.

But he can't move.

He looks behind himself. There's something heavy pressing down on his back and his neck's stiff, but he can just make out brown stone, black ashes, and grey dust below the waist. Tons of it. Literally tons of debris hold him down, pinning him in place and squeezing the air from his lungs.

The pale man stares in his direction, stares at the shifting rock and the pinned hero.

"Help..." Mumen Rider wheezes. Everything's going fuzzy along the edges and he knows that he's about to black out again. "Get..."

The man smiles.

There's something terrible in that smile. Something rotten. Something that Mumen Rider is powerless to stop no matter how much he tries. "No, no," he mouths. "No... don't..."

The girl starts to say something.

The man clamps his hand over her mouth.

The world shakes.

The hero reaches out in vain.

The girl struggles against the pale hands.

The world fades slowly.

The man drags the girl away.

The pressure grows on Mumen Rider's back.

The monster erupts from the ruins,

The air explodes with psychic power.

The world disappears.

**^V^V^V^**

The sound of waves is far away.

It's... he thinks it's far off. Everything's so fuzzy, so... so... are there even words...? What even is...?

He can't see very far. It's not dark out, it's just... the world doesn't exist more than a few paces out, and he doesn't know how far out a few paces really are in this place, if it's really a place. Centimeters? Meters? Everything's bleakness and mist just out of reach.

Mumen Rider takes a tentative step and the end of the world moves away from him. He feels something soft underfoot and glances down, if he can really be said to have feet or a sense of down in this place. He lifts his foot to see a fully-formed cherry blossom there, whole despite his crushing weight pressing down upon it. He looks around to find pink petals strewn about him, blowing in from his right on a cool wind rich with the fragrance of flowers. That's about where he figures that the water is.

As though this is just a dream, as though _life _is but a dream, he goes with it without question. He turns right and follows the snowstorm of flowers back to their source. Moments or hours? Meters or leagues? Units of time and space don't really seem to apply here, but he finds the end of it eventually.

The man finds a tree on the edge of a cliff, shedding petals in a pink blizzard. The petals fall away so quickly and thickly that he's utterly certain that it should be denuded by now. Inexplicably, captivatingly, it retains its lush volume and endlessly showers the misty world with color. Stubbornly, it clings to life. The defiance is so oddly beautiful that he only barely notices the slight figure of silver and pink sitting beside the trunk.

He tries to speak, but he doesn't yet have the means. He tries to call out for a name, for any one of a thousand questions, and finds the wind his only answer. The wind that builds and howls, the wind that becomes a tempest, the wind that seems to push him back and drive him further from the truth.

The wind that takes him from me again.

**^V^V^V^**

**Author Notes**

_(This chapter was first posted on Tuesday, April 23rd, 2019)_

_(This chapter was edited and re-posted on Friday, August 23rd, 2019)_

Before I decided to split Chapter One in half, the plan was to actually show Mumen Rider making the decision to jump off of the roof and following events entirely from his perspective. But then it just went on and on, and I had to think of a way to split it in half and still make it seem like the end of a chapter. Showing things from Tomoe's perspective seemed like one way of doing it, and it let me show off the scene inside the bus which wasn't in my original plans. Alright, cool. How do I open _this _chapter? I honestly didn't have a clue. My first idea was to back up a bit and show my idea for Mumen Rider's decision to Justice Crash into the scene, but... I don't know. I couldn't figure out a good way to backtrack without making it obvious that I was repeating myself. I also didn't want to write the exact same scene from two different perspectives. So, you got a little backstory – a lot of which is canon, the rest I made up because it seems like the kind of thing that fits the character – and then things got to pick up where I left them.

"Look out for the other guy" isn't actually a lesson taught in driving classes (at least, not in the one that I went to) but it's something that my father says all the time and it seems like something that you _should _be taught, so I threw it in. This admittedly doesn't match the manga's chronology, where it's hinted that Mumen Rider's been fighting crime (or bullies) since middle school, well before he'd have taken driver's lessons. But hey, it's entirely possible that he might've had the sentiment since he was in school but the instructor put it to words. We're following the anime anyways, so I guess that it's a moot point.

The last thing that I'll leave you on is Blond Bomber. For the scene that I had in mind and what's coming, I couldn't think of a canon hero to jump in and fight the monster. I tried, guys. While Hellish Blizzard and Terrible Tornado have the right powers, they don't have the personality. Amai Mask has the right personality, but his powers aren't right. Out of necessity, you get an original character. I just want to say that I've got no plans to write a spin-off focusing on his exploits and turn the established cast into a Greek chorus to comment on how awesome he is. I made that kind of mistake when I wrote Yu Yu Hakusho fan fiction in the old days. I learned my lesson and can now write OCs properly, but I still feel sorry about it.

_Mea culpa._

**^V^V^V^**

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

**B-bmp B-bmp B-bmp B-bmp B-bmp B-bmp**

Her green eyes slide sideways towards the huge man beside her at the table. His sullen gaze under a scarred brow could pull a shawl of darkness over the most cheerful gathering. So far, things haven't been cheerful. Everyone's anxious. Everyone's upset.

Everyone's hungry.

"This food's getting cold," she comments. The man turns his stoic and soulful blue eyes down upon the low table. The lobster and noodles aren't steaming like they were a few minutes ago and the dumplings have lost their moist luster.

**B-bmp B-bmp B-bmp B-bmp B-bmp B-bmp**

"It's unforgivable," says the man kneeling on the opposite side of the table from her. She glances at him. His piercing, golden eyes whir and click, scanning every wavelength in the EM-spectrum. He can see through walls. He can see through floors. He can see through _clothes_. She shivers at that. Only the knowledge that he completely lacks a sex drive or any concept of perversion keeps her from lashing out at him with her talent as his gaze sweeps over her. "Master," says the man – the metal man, the Demon Cyborg – as he looks to the person beside him. "With your permission, I will search the city. I will leave no stone unturned. I will find Mumen Rider. I will bring him to the table. I will-"

**B-bmp B-bmp B-bmp B-bmp B-bmp B-bmp**

"Oy, oy," says the bald man around whom so many seem to orbit like a star. Saitama... he's possibly the second-strongest man on the planet. "Mumen's never late without a reason and he bought dinner last time. Cut the guy some slack, Genos."

**B-bmp B-bmp B-bmp B-bmp B-bmp B-bmp**

She turns her eyes back to the strongest man on Earth. The man to whom the strongest monsters surrender without a fight. His pounding heart, his Engine, threatens to erupt from his chest.

**B-bmp B-bmp B-bmp B-bmp B-bmp B-bmp**

"And stop worrying, King!" the bald man snaps. "You'll give yourself a heart attack!"

**B-bmp B-**

Silence. Finally.

Everyone sits still and quiet again. Nobody says a word for a full five minutes. Now the lobster's lost all of its steam, the noodles are looking sad, and the dumplings are visibly dried out and hardening. Everyone's a little edgy on an empty stomach and the heat wave isn't helping things. She takes one look towards the empty spot at the foot of the table, decides that enough is enough, and lashes out with a pair of chopsticks. Before anyone can stop her, she wolfs down a dumpling with the graceless rage of a beast.

"Hellish Blizzard!" Genos snaps. "You dare take the first bite? This is the home of my master, and the right of-"

Now King's chewing on lobster and Genos openly gapes at him.

"This is-"

The sound of Saitama slurping down noodles draws Genos's undivided attention towards him. Saitama wilts a little under the gaze but shrugs it off and finishes his mouthful.

"Blizzard's right," Saitama says. "He'll understand if we start without him. We'll just pack up his food if he doesn't show up soon. If there's any left."

"Yes, Master," Genos says. He goes for the dumplings only to find them all gone. He glares at Blizzard and finds only an unrepentant and shameless smile on her face.

They were delicious.


	3. Chapter 3

The following is a non-profit fan-based story and the author is unaffiliated with ONE, Shueisha, or Viz Media, who own the rights to _One-Punch Man_. Please support the official releases.

**^V^V^V^**

**:: HUMAN EVIL ::**

**by**

**Seraph of Winters Past**

**^V^V^V^**

**Chapter Three**

"**Without a Name to Go On"**

Just as violence dragged him to sleep, violence drags him back out.

It's not intentional, but it's violence nonetheless: a sudden motion without warning, possessed of extreme force. Mumen Rider's not aware of what came before. He just finds himself in the middle of the act.

"Hguuuck!" He swallows air like he's never tasted it before. A tremendous weight's wrested from his back and his lungs swell of their own volition. The force of it is like a hurricane. It floods his body with the essence of life, hurling him back to the world of the living and startling everyone around.

"Holy crap!" someone just out of sight bellows. "There's a man under there!"

"No!" someone else shouts. "Shinji, don't-"

_**THUDDD!**_

This one fits the conventional definition of violence a lot better. The titanic weight slams into his back and red-hot pain slices through every nerve in his body like a knife. Caught between what might be a literal rock and a hard place, the pressure forces him flat against the ground and the only thing keeping his skull from caving in is his emerald-hued helmet. _Something _happens to his torso and he's not sure what, but the immediate result is the expulsion of air from his lungs in a terrific gasp and the threatening blackness coming for him again.

Yes... blackness. He's looking at something other than that now. The memory of the woman by the tree fades as quick-glimpsed impressions of the world around him solidify in his mind. It's dark, but there's a sliver of light up ahead. It's not _that _bright, but it may as well be a spotlight against the black.

Silhouettes play out within the light. Feet – many of them, booted and dirty – dance in that narrow sliver. He feels their steps more than he hears them as blood rushes through his temples so quickly and powerfully that he fears his head's going to burst. The activity lasts forever and just a moment before he sees fingertips like snakes constricting around the edges of the upper border of darkness. There's a tremendous heave and the sliver grows. Now he sees ankles. Now he sees brown trouser cuffs. Now he sees wreckage and desperation.

But first, air.

As though he's a man-shaped bellows, the sudden removal of pressure from his back forces the air into his lungs. Nature abhors a vacuum, after all. It's edged with this dull and offensive pain, but it's just so _good _to be alive, isn't it? He'd like to keep _being_ alive if he can help it, but everything and its mother wants to turn him down for a new lease on it. Thankfully, his rescuers don't seem to care.

"Alright, Shinji!" that second voice shouts. There's a hard edge to it, but there's something humane to it too. Something afraid. That's good: that means the man's taking it seriously and he knows that a life's at stake. Some of Mumen Rider's betters sometimes forget that.

"'Alright, Shinji,' what?!" a new voice answers the second.

"We're going to lift!" the second man barks. "This time, we're not going to drop it! Alright? Alright! Lesson learned! And, _lift!_"

There's this huge chorus of gasps and moans and grunts and then the weight almost completely disappears from Mumen Rider's torso. The sliver grows until it becomes the whole world. It's bright in the way that you only get when it's pitch-black out and someone shines a whole lot of artificial light everywhere, marking the world in such high contrast between light and dark that everything's either over-lit or invisible. What's lit is mostly familiar but has some new additions.

He's back on the intersection with the totaled school bus, but there's somehow even more rubble than there was when last he'd been there. Or, been awake. It's hard to keep that kind of thing straight. The light's source is revealed as floodlights attached to cranes and boxy fire engines. It seems like they're all pointed at him now that his presence is known. The biggest addition, though, is the few dozen emergency responders milling around. Most of them are clad in thick brown jackets with bright orange reflective stripes across the hems and torsos. He immediately recognizes them for firemen: City Z's best. His vision's blurry, but the tiger-and-chrysanthemum emblem on their shoulders is extremely distinctive and marks them for Firehouse Z-670.

"It's Mumen Rider!" the third voice gasps. The Cyclist For Justice gets a good look at him. His face is young and fresh, and the soot and ash do nothing to hide his surprise. "It's-"

"What did we just tell you?!" the first fireman snaps. "Shut it 'til you drop it! Annnnd..."

The firemen drop something big and flat that might've been a billboard sign nearby and all of the rubble around him seems to shift. It fails to release him. That's disconcerting, but hey: improvement! He'd try freeing himself, but his arms and legs are like jelly so he'll let someone else do that.

"Don't panic, Mr. Mumen," one of the firemen says. "We'll get you out!"

"Someone get shovels!"

"They're called entrenching tools, rookie."

"Bite me, 'Kashi!"

"The gods gave you hands for a reason, boys! Use them!"

There's a lot of bantering and arguing, but the firemen finally learn to work while talking and tear into the rubble around Mumen Rider. Brick and stone shift and settle as the men labor but they're determined and quick and they don't give the ruins the chance to reclaim him. He doesn't make it easy for them. He tries, but he's hungry and tired and still in a ton of pain and it feels like his throat and lungs are lined with sandpaper. So, you can imagine that his coordination's shot through the basement just now. One of the firemen actually has to restrain his arms so the others can work unimpeded.

"Ready, everyone?" asks the leader of the bunch – Kashi, Mumen Rider thinks... and he _thinks _that it's the leader – as he grabs hold of the bicyclist's right arm. Another fireman traps Mumen Rider's left arm in his armpit and a few others get him by his padding. "Pull on three! One, two...!"

On three, the whole bunch of them give it everything they've got. It feels like they're ripping him in half like a wishbone and he almost screams. 'Almost' here doesn't mean that he holds it in, no. 'Almost' here means that the sound through parched and delirious lips doesn't quite sound like a proper scream. More like a drunken goose barking at someone. But, like most things, it passes. By millimeters at first and then by centimeters, they wrest him from the rubble until he comes free with one final lurch.

"I'm okay, I'm okay, where'd they go?" he tries to say. What comes out is, "Mokey, m-m-mokey, wrbthygobyb...?"

Well, that's obviously not working. He tries to stand. He tries to find his bike and roll out. But he's spent hours trapped in rubble and his legs have gotten virtually no blood flow. He's glad that he's still got legs – they're incredibly useful – but oversteps his bounds and tries telling one foot to go in front of the other. The foot instead tells his head, "No, you first!" and he almost smashes his face against the street. But he's got people to help him out with that and the firemen don't let him fall so far as his knees.

"Easy, easy!" someone says and Mumen Rider has no idea who it is. Many hands ease him down to a sitting position somewhere mostly clear of sharp and pointy stones and he's got a blanket thrown over his shoulder before he knows it. Then he hears someone else say, "Take this!" That's really confusing and he flinches because, honestly, that's the kind of thing that you usually say before you deck someone in the schnoz and he's just had one of those days. Instead, when his eyes focus, he finds a hand holding a bottle of water in front of his face. And it's sweating from condensation... possibly the most attractive thing that he's ever seen.

His movements aren't coordinated and he's still acting on instinct for the most part, but his hands lash out like vipers and clumsily snatch the bottle from a shocked firefighter. The coolness of the liquid is tantalizing even through the thick leather of his gloves. He doesn't even remember wrenching off the cap. He just forces the end into his mouth and the water trickles down his chin and into his mouth and some of it goes down the wrong tube but Blast, it's so good to be alive after all of that!

"Ghuck...!" he gasps after downing half the bottle. He spits up a good deal of it and what comes out is a filthy grey-brown slurry that looks about as bad as how most of him feels. A palsied hand wipes some of the paste from his mouth and he gathers his breath. He finally feels well-enough to speak and tells Kashi, "My thanks to... ugh... _kaff!_.. City Z's finest..."

The man smirks, and suddenly everything he's done seems worth it.

"What's the ETA on that EMT?" Mumen Rider hears someone asking in the background. The response is an unsure, "Traffic's backed up and a few roads are impassible. Could be thirty minutes."

"I don't need an ambulance," the cyclist says. He tries standing up in an effort to prove his point. All he does is fall flat on his butt and sputter a few times. "Much. I don't need one _that much..._"

"You spent all afternoon sleeping with a mermaid, pal," Kashi snorts. "You're getting a warm pillow at the hospital."

Mumen Rider stares at the man for a few seconds. His eyes slide sideways until he's looking at the billboard sign that had pinned him in the rubble for so long. Sure enough, proudly painted on the horrendously damaged board is an impossibly buxom blue-haired mermaid lounging inside of a fishbowl, staring vacuously into space at a series of stars arranged in the _Katagana _letters for "Aquarius". He honestly has no idea what kind of business that's supposed to be an advertisement for, but it looks amazing.

"...I'd like a turn on top, please," Mumen Rider says weakly and everyone in earshot bursts out laughing. With what the first responders must've seen over the course of a very long and morbid day, it's a nice way to release some tension. It feels good to laugh. It also stings Mumen Rider like a hornet the size of a Doberman, but he needs it. He'll take the moment of levity while it lasts, because reality comes crashing back down on him too quickly.

"What about the girl?" Mumen Rider demands. "Is she okay?"

"Huh?" Shinji asks. "What girl?"

"The girl!" Mumen Rider snaps. He tries to get back to his feet. This time, awkward though it is, he manages a weak but semi-solid footing and stays upright. He brushes off a few steadying hands and turns toward Kashi. "The girl who... the one who went missing! Someone took her!"

"Missing?" Kashi asks, eyes arched upward in surprise. "Kidnapped?"

"Yes!" Mumen Rider says and now there's fire in his voice. "Before I passed out, I saw one of the children getting kidnapped! A man clamped his hand over her mouth and-"

"I don't know anything about that," Kashi interrupts, raising his hands to placate him. "The police are handling that and we were just here to clean up the aftermath. Look, you probably hit your head..."

"No!" Mumen Rider snaps, pointing an accusatory finger directly into the man's face. He takes a moment to realize that he's aiming for an ear, which is pretty far off of his intended target. "Probably! I probably hit my head but that doesn't change what I saw! What precinct is handling this? Who do I speak to?!"

"Damned if I know," Kashi admits. He puts a hand on Mumen's shoulder. "Look, you really need to sit down..."

Mumen Rider angrily brushes the hand away. He knows that it's bad form. He knows that it's a terrible way to treat someone who saved his life. But he's also seen a few things over the years. He's tried to be the best that the everyman can be, but that journey's taken him to some pretty terrible places. He's seen humans doing things to each other that monsters can never match. He's seen starving children holed up in basements. He's seen men beating their wives with belts in open view of an uncaring public. He's seen a naked body hung from the steel tresses of a railroad bridge for a rapist's ongoing pleasure. He's seen every kind of perversion that can be visited upon one human by another in a position of power, and he knows that he's seen the beginning of another one.

48\. There's a number that someone told him once. That's the number of hours that your average kidnapping victim has before they wind up in a shallow grave somewhere. The lucky ones can go on a bit longer, but the fact is that if a case isn't solved in 48 hours, it's probably either not going to be solved or it'll be solved too late to help anybody. And how many of those hours had he slept under the rubble? How long has the sand in that girl's hourglass been spilling out? How long has...

_Blast_, he thinks. _I don't even have a name for her! Who is she?!_

"We're getting you to a hospital," someone says and it's not Kashi. The hand comes from behind. Mumen Rider tries to swat it aside but another presses him hard on the shoulder while he's distracted. Hands come at him from all around, trying to restrain him as he grows more violent. He sees a life in need of saving and a bunch of firemen getting in the way. They see a confused and battered man on the verge of a breakdown. He knows that they're right, but it's hard not to take it personally.

"Stop!" he cries. "Get off...!"

"Get his arms!" one of the firemen shouts back. Somewhere in the middle of the scuffle, the blanket comes off. He hasn't been holding onto the water bottle for a while now, and he couldn't tell you when he dropped that. Three men have grips on him and they're slowly dragging him down with a weight like the end of the world. His best efforts mean diddly right now. "Get him before-"

_**Crash!**_

It's so loud that nobody can hear anything else for a moment. Firemen dive for cover and people generally lose their senses. The pressure pulling Mumen Rider to the ground ceases as every man looks out for himself. This leaves Mumen Rider, staggered, as the only one looking out for the cause.

A green bicycle charred nearly black slides off the roof of the demolished bus and clatters to a halt on the glass-and-pebble-strewn street. It's still smoking.

"Welcome back to Earth," Mumen Rider snorts. He's on the bike before anyone can stop him. Legs burning, stomach aching, vision blurry, the Cyclist for Justice kicks off hard and races out into the night.

**^V^V^V^**

The mercury rises above 35 degrees. That's Celsius for you. If you're still stubbornly clinging to Fahrenheit, then you're looking at 95: one of those rare occasions when you get a whole number in both scales. It's a little detail, but it's one of the things passing through Blond Bomber's mind just now.

Of course, it's even hotter in the nearly-figurative center stage. Dozens of photographers and scores of technicians mill around behind the white-hot glare of the spotlights. All of those bulbs throw off heat and nobody's getting out of this without shedding a few buckets of sweat. At least, nobody but him. He's got people to do that for him.

Two men in A-neck shirts and cotton shorts towel him off. A third shoves a straw into the hero's mouth and he sucks down an icy sports drink from a plastic bottle. Clothes, towels, bottles... all of them are crudely plastered with the _Hero Watcher's Weekly Review_ logo. Most of them are for him to keep. They want to make absolutely certain that he knows what side his bread's buttered on and he doesn't forget it.

He steals a glance behind himself. They're in the middle of a junkyard, but you'd never know it. They've swept away all the dust and dirt from the immediate vicinity and the background's been blocked out with a colossal blue screen, concealing the piles of rusty and dilapidated automobiles. The only one visible is a boxy prison bus on which someone dropped a wrecking ball. That's the only reason why nobody's bought it from Monster Jonouchi's Used Auto Parts. This also makes it the perfect spot for the day's events. The set dressers got the passenger side painted safety yellow sometime before he arrived on scene and it looks just like the ones he rode in the good old days, back in City B...

"You're gonna do great!" the bulbous director tells him, strutting up from behind the lights playing havoc with Blond Bomber's retinas. "You're gonna be a star! Just remember that! Confidence! Confidence and chutzpah! Stick out your chest, flex those arms, and don't look directly at the cameras! It must all look natural!"

_Easier done than said, _Blond Bomber thinks. He looks towards the mob of crewmen and attendants. Behind the glare, he can't see a thing. _I couldn't find a camera if I tried!_

"Lights, everyone!" the director shouts, spinning on his heels and waddling back within the halos of the set lamps. "I want us ready in two! Is that enough time for another one of those wonderful _Okonomiyaki _plates they sell on the corner? No? Then put in an order for two and have them ready for the next break! Alright, everyone! Places, places...!"

The towels come off and Blond Bomber's left in relative seclusion, standing alone in his silly blue-and-white spandex costume, freshly washed and starched so heavily that you could cut bread on the wrinkles. He pinches his nose in the figurative lifetime before the shoot begins. It's too early for this. It's _far _too early for this. He only killed the monster a little under a day ago, but so much has happened so fast and he hasn't gotten more than a couple of hours' sleep in. The publicity machine's been working overtime, and his manager threw the photo shoot together under the promise – not assumption, _promise _– that everyone will forget about the incident before the weekend.

"You mean next weekend?" Blond Bomber had asked. The reply was, "You're new to this, aren't you? Do you know how many news cycles away Monday is?"

"Okay, hero!" the director calls out. "We're ready to roll? Are you ready to roll? I'm ready to roll! Let's roll! Ten, nine, eight...!"

"Wait," Blond Bomber starts, "I've got no direction. What am I...?"

"...two, one! ROLL!"

The superhero couldn't see anything behind the spotlights before. Now he's got dozens of cameras flashing and he just can't see anything at all. He's also been told to show chutzpah – whatever that means – and stick out those arms and impressive pectorals. Posing? Acting? They're just going to take whatever pictures look the most impressive and plaster them on the cover of the upcoming _HWWR_ issue before selling the rights to the failed takes to other magazines and tabloids.

First, he's just standing there looking self-important and collected, like he's being forced to stand for a group photo at his niece's birthday party. Fourth take of twelve because Aunt Kaoru blinked and the dog was looking the wrong way. Then he starts flexing, imitating a few poses that he saw in an episode of _Sentei Ranger _as a kid. Then he does whatever comes naturally, which doesn't sit well with anybody.

"The people want to see you doing your superhero thing!" the director calls out. "Can't you levitate the truck?! Do something spectacular, baby!"

Yes. Technically, he _can_ levitate the truck. But levitation comes in many forms. In Blond Bomber's case, it's more like, 'send it flying about fifteen meters straight up and hope that it doesn't kill anybody on its way down.'

"Not if you want more than one shot!" Blond Bomber says, wincing as another flash messes up his rods and cones. "You..."

"Ah, we'll fix it in post!" the director shouts. "Just act like you're about to use your powers! And, acting, acting...!"

"Sir, you can't be in here..."

"Oh hey, it's you! We thought you were dead!"

"Somebody get Security!"

_Wait, what?_

Nobody thinks to turn the lights off or even dim them, but the cameras stop flashing and Blond Bomber can kind of, sort of see something going on behind the cameras. There's a lot of movement and the voices are getting louder and more agitated. And there's this one voice that's almost kind of familiar. He can't put a face to it, but he _can _connect it to a brief glimpse of a green helmet...

"Let him through!" Blond Bomber shouts. Authority tends to go to the person with all the lights shining on him, especially when he can level a city block. The crowd parts and Mumen Rider – a bit bloody, a bit dustier, and a whole bit sweatiest – stumbles into the limelight. Inspiration strikes the psychic and he's not about to let this opportunity pass up. He strides towards the cyclist with a gleam in his eye.

"Bomber!" Mumen Rider says. "We need to t-"

"Start shooting!" Blond Bomber shouts, wrapping an arm over Mumen Rider's shoulder and smiling far too exuberantly. "Two heroes in one place!"

"No, no," the dazed hero stammers. "I need...!"

"Just had a brilliant idea!" the director shouts. "Gods I'm brilliant! Blondie, scoop him up in your arms! You're swooping in, you're saving the day, you're...!"

The cameras are already flashing. Unprepared for it, Mumen Rider groans and covers his eyes. He almost loses his footing but Blond Bomber's ready for it and he's trying to pick up the man and cradle him like he's about to carry him off to safety. This doesn't go over well with anyone involved.

"What even is this?!" Mumen Rider snaps. He throws off the new hero's grip and points to the bus. "And this isn't even the right kind of school bus! People _died _and you're playing fast and loose with the details?! What... what even are you doing here?"

"Mr. Rider..." someone starts. They don't get the chance to finish. Our intrepid hero shouts, "I'm taking five minutes and then I'll let you get back to work! Hero business! You, me, behind the bus, now!"

He's too weak to drag anyone anywhere right now, but Mumen Rider gets a grip on Blond Bomber's hand and pulls him back behind the bus. It's all too awkward and sudden for anyone to stop. Technically, one more call for Security could get this whole thing sorted out and shooting could resume in two minutes tops, but everyone's still too stunned to try it yet. That's fine for Mumen Rider.

"Alright," the cyclist says after taking a deep breath where the cameras can't see him. "First off, congratulations on your promotion."

Blond Bomber blinks. "I got a promotion?"

"B-13," Mumen Rider says. "Second, I..."

"This is awesome!" Blond Bomber says giddily as Mumen Rider tries to get his attention. "I've got to tell my-"

"Hey!" Mumen Rider says, snapping his fingers. "Eyes here! Come back to Earth, sir! I've got to ask what the heck happened yesterday. I've been a little out of it and I can't get a straight answer out of anyone, but I've seen a newspaper say that you saved the day and I'm either dead or fighting zombies somewhere in City Y. I need to know who's leading the investigation. There are six police precincts in this city, and-"

"No idea," comes the instant answer.

Mumen Rider stares at him, jaw agape for a few seconds, before asking, "Come again?"

"I fight monsters," the new hero says, shrugging his shoulders. "Once it was over, I moved on. It's been press release after phone call after interview ever since."

"What...?" Mumen Rider honestly needs a few moments to collect his thoughts. "What about the people that you almost killed?"

"The people that I _saved?_" Blond Bomber asks. "I left them in the capable hands of the authorities. I blow things up. Honestly, it sounds like we've got a symbiotic relationship, here."

"You were _there,_" Mumen Rider says. "You could have checked. You could have stopped..."

"This conversation can only go in circles," Blond Bomber says. "I break things. Others fix them. Do you mind? Photo shoots take a lot of money and it's burning out there."

Mumen Rider sighs deeply. He didn't know what he expected. Maybe some information. Maybe some empathy? Maybe? Whatever he came here for, he's not going to get it. He takes one more look at the man and picks up a few details that he missed before. The first is the eyeliner and cosmetics. In the scalding heat, they're on the verge of running. Mumen Rider doesn't remember seeing them yesterday, but he guesses that the man needs them for the camera so people can make out the essential details. They've even sprayed a tan along his collarbone and over his costume, literally painting the shadows of his muscles so they show up better on film. Mumen Rider's not looking at a man right now. He's looking at a product being packaged for mass consumption.

It's a curious phenomenon. The more popular that a hero gets, the higher their rank, the more self-absorbed they tend to get. Somewhere around the middle of Class B, someone throws a switch in their brains. They rise so high above the ordinary people that they forget what it's like to be one of them, and everything becomes a game. They're increasingly willing to accept casualties for victory. They're more likely to avoid helping if there's a chance of failure because it'll hurt their rankings. And if people get hurt? Well... they've gotten everything they can out of the situation. Why stick around?

And the public loves it.

"I don't..." Mumen Rider's voice is a bit slurry now. He's tired. Sure, he got a good day's sleep under the rubble, but that doesn't really count and he's been riding hard all night. More importantly, he's tired of the scenery.

The bicyclist wants to sling shade at the man before he goes. He wants to say something sarcastic. Something like, "Thanks for pulling me from the wreckage." But that's not how Mumen Rider does things. He'll get nothing out of it except for a brief moment's satisfaction, but it'd hurt his conscience and he's got more important things to do. He's got a clock ticking down in his head, and he doesn't know what it's counting down to.

"Good luck," Mumen Rider finally says. He offers a twitching hand to the surprised Blond Bomber who, after a moment, shakes it. The younger man's grip is firm. It's hard. It's _far _too hard for a friendly handshake. Blond Bomber tries to crush the hand in his, and that tells Mumen Rider almost as much as the makeup. "I've got to get going. Good luck with your shoot."

"Thanks," Blond Bomber tells him. "Are you sure that you don't want to stick around?"

Mumen Rider shakes his head. "You weren't in Class C for long. You only had to deal with the quota for a few weeks. It's been my life for years. Eventually, you just kind of get used to it and you can't stay still for long. I've got work to do. Tell Hellish Blizzard that I'm sorry about missing dinner last night."

"Huh?" Blond Bomber asks. "What am I...?"

But Mumen Rider doesn't answer. His back's turned and he's walking away. So quietly that the man could never hear him, Mumen Rider adds, "_Be careful._ _You're swimming with the sharks now. Hellish Blizzard, Amai Mask, Snek, Tanktop Black Hole... they're going to hear about you soon."_

The Cyclist For Justice exhales once and basks in the coolness of the shade for a moment. Then he's out from behind the bus and he's off and running again, pushing his way past the rows of technicians and executives and he's out to do the thing that he does best.

Blond Bomber blinks a few times.

"Time is money and money is time!" the director shouts out through a megaphone, breaking the silence into tiny slivers of surprise. "Let's get rolling and let's get famous!"

The new superhero smirks confidently. He was never one for small talk. But this? Dozens waiting on him to make a move? The world ready to hear every detail about him? A hero of the old guard shaking his hand? This he could get used to.

**^V^V^V^**

The streets are dead.

With this heat, few are stupid enough to venture out into the glaring sunlight. The wind's nonexistent and the blacktop's almost hot-enough to burn your feet through your shoes. There are rumors of clouds gathering in the west, but the forecasts have said that they'll venture north and miss the city entirely. Their silent, invisible feelers extend out in all directions, and the only hint of their presence is the absolutely atrocious humidity.

Riding a bicycle through that oppressive day is a nightmare. The air's filled to the brim with moisture and it can't wick any from Mumen Rider's skin. He's drowning in sweat and it seeps into his crusty wounds. His pace is horrid and his technique is sloppy. His vision's doubled up and he hears things that aren't there. It might be delirium, it might be blood rushing through his temples: he's got no idea. He just wants to go to bed. He wants to curl up under his covers and hide from the pain. But he can't. That voice just won't let him. That voice that's haunted him since he got his first license. The one that says, "Look out for the other guy."

_No harm in taking a breather, _he tells himself, coasting to a halt by a telephone pole in a shaded side-street. _Five minutes... just five minutes..._

This is a mistake.

He tries to dismount. His legs are so stiff and sore from his entombment that he can't raise them over the toptube. And when you're on a machine requiring constant forward momentum to remain upright... _problems_. He mutters a short curse that gets a lot more forceful as he pitches over and goes down in a tangle of limbs, tubes, and wheels. He's sputtering up a storm as his insides rebel against him and the punishment he's inflicted on them. He finds himself lying on the ground with his cheek pressed flat against the baking ground, searing the stamped concrete pattern into his skin.

"Thank you h-helmet," he tells nobody in particular. "Th-tha-thaaaank you for... _ugh..._ being there for me. Okay, legs. _Huff. _Your turn. One, two... _ugh_...!"

He just barely lifts his head from the ground and swings his arms under him. It hurts a lot and his shoulders protest and his hips throw out a complaint but he almost manages to get them to work together and get him off the pavement. The bike raises a firm objection, tangles up his feet, and down he goes again. He coughs a few times as his torso convulses and there's not much that he can do to fight it.

"'_Ugh'_ isn't three," Mumen Rider mumbles. "That doesn't... _huff... _that doesn't count..."

"Let me help you," I tell him. I help pull him away from the bicycle and give him room to spread out his limbs. That lowers the proverbial hurdle and lets him coordinate his arms and legs. He twists and rolls into a sitting position against the timber. Breathing deep, resting his helmed head against the world's least comfortable headrest, he recovers a little of his breath and lets the shade take some of the color from his flushed face.

"Th-thank you," he says. "Thank you... I..."

His eyes go wide, but you can't really see it under those tinted goggles of his. He takes in everything about the street around him. He takes in the locked cars and crumbling buildings. He takes in the faded paint lines down the center of the road. He takes in the silhouettes of carrion birds perched on power lines against stark white clouds. He takes in the countless faces of people of all ages printed on missing person posters. He even takes in that one cracked pane of glass on the second story of the building next to the one ahead of him. The only thing that he doesn't take in is another living soul.

He looks around again, blinking hard and trying to clear his vision. Nobody appears when he's sure that he hasn't taken leave of his senses. He's utterly alone on the side street and there's no sign of whoever helped him out.

"Where could... _huff..._ where could you have...?" he asks, abandoning the question when it becomes obvious that nobody's around to give him an answer. It's cool in the shade. Cooler, anyways. But he's sweating regardless. His forehead's drenched and his scalp itches. That part will happen when you go more than a day without taking off your helmet. More than the heat, his scalp _burns._

"Ten minutes," he promises himself. "Just _ten _minutes..."

"Coo?"

He looks up. A pigeon sits atop his telephone pole, looking down at him in confusion. Likely curious to know who he's talking to. Noticing the Cyclist For Justice's stare, the bird takes wing and flies away like it's the easiest thing in the world.

"Don't mock me," Mumen Rider says, barely restraining a growl. "I... I can make it on my own... I can... I'm going to... _huff... _I'm going to freaking _die._"

Palsied hands find and undo the buckles holding his helmet on. When he takes it off... oh, what a relief! He scratches hard and long and somehow musses up his hair even more than it was before. If he had a cool wind, that'd just be gravy. For now, all that he has is a moment's relief and questions that he has no answers for.

"It's a big city," he tells nobody in particular now that the bird's gone. Talking helps him keep his thoughts straight and he's got a lot of them to sort through. "There are six police precincts for the inner city alone. Uptown? Carry the one... it's a lot. The city's falling apart and you can't get a straight answer out of anybody. The news is focusing on the Blond Bomber and not the bus. I don't... I don't know. It'll take another eight hours to pedal between those first six stations. Blast, I wish I had an idea of where to start..."

Deep breaths. He sucks in air slowly, wholly filling his lungs before letting it out just as deeply. He rests his hands behind his head to open up his airways and calm his furious heart. He's got a lot on his plate and panicking isn't going to solve anything: it's just going to be inefficient and useless if he does. He might as well soothe his frayed nerves so that he can tackle the big problems.

"Alright, Mumen Rider," he says. "Where to?"

He wipes off his forehead and holds his helmet between his hands. He's about to slam it home atop his head when he catches sight of something pale inside the dark netting. His attention piqued, he plucks it out and stares at it until his curiosity turns to confusion.

It's a pink flower. Perfectly formed and fragrant despite having spent at least 24 uninterrupted hours crushed between his sweating skull and the netting. It's almost the size of his clenched fist and he can feel the softness of the petals even through his gloves. It looks so delicate that he cups it between his fingers rather than gripping it for fear of ruining whatever whim of fate preserved it against him. It defies belief and shoots two new thoughts through his mind as he stares at it.

The first is that it's a _sakura _flower: a cherry blossom, the kind that doesn't bloom for another nine months. Every April, the countryside transforms from grey-brown with smattered green to a brilliant pink-white as the buds of the cherry trees erupt into maturity. Pedaling through the forests of color as the petals rain down upon him in a pink cloud has always been one of life's greatest joys if only for the novelty of it: the flowers don't last long, and their quick deaths have become a metaphor for a short life that was nonetheless lived to its fullest. In these morbid times, as cities fall from the map like petals from the trees, the relevance of the flower has only deepened.

The second, more striking thought is that he's seen it before, and he can't remember where.

A cool wind smelling of flowers and seawater runs over him. It carries the flower out of his hand and blows it out of the shade, out of the side street, back in the direction that he came. He's up before he knows it. He's up and running, the bike and exhaustion forgotten behind him. Like a fish on a line, the sight of the flower draws him in beyond his understanding. The chase leads him over a solid city block, but the coldness of the breeze preserves him against the sun's beating rays. He doesn't mind the stares of the few pedestrians out and about. He doesn't pay attention to the single car that he almost runs into. For the first time in years, Mumen Rider jaywalks and ignores the lights. The only thing that matters is the flower and its winding path.

He's too late. He was always going to be too late. It remains outside of his reach no matter how quickly he picks up his pace. The cherry blossom outpaces him because it _must _outpace him for things to fall in place. The blossom tumbles headlong past this light post and that telephone pole, over that car and under that sign before finally striking a brick wall covered in paper. It doesn't hit hard, but whatever preserved it finally gives out and the petals scatter on impact, blowing away to the eight points of the compass rose and leaving Mumen Rider alone with the face of a little girl with alabaster skin and an upturned nose.

Her face is marked by the pink of the blossom's pigment. The building's façade is lined with dozens of broadsheets presenting the names and likenesses of the lost and the damned. The signs have proliferated over the last few months: as monsters and villains rise in numbers and humanity loses people and neighborhoods faster than they can be replaced, the posters and prints have found their way into every street over the continent. Their kind will only grow until no more humans remain to mourn and search for their dearly beloveds.

"Gods," he whispers. "It's you..."

It's ludicrous that, amongst so many faces, Mumen Rider's impossible flower leads him to exactly the one that he's looking for. But he's seen monsters rise out of the sea and aliens obliterate a city from the sky. He's seen men become demons and he's seen the laws of physics abandon their posts ahead of the legions of madness. Ludicrous though the coincidence may be, Mumen Rider knows that in light of all _that_, it's not so far beyond the bounds of reason as he should expect. He also knows that the longer he waits to act on this stroke of fortune, the greater the chance that he'll squander it.

"Mitsubishi Tomoe," he says as he reads the information below her portrait. "That's who you are. Tomoe... hah haaaaah! The police even set up a hotline!"

He's running. Giddy and excited, the pain in his limbs means nothing anymore. He left his bicycle a block away and he's never had a more pressing need for it. He fights his way through the muggy air that's flooded back in since the breeze ended. Probably for the best: nobody can understand a word you're saying over the phone when you've got the wind blowing into the microphone.

"This is Mumen Rider!" he says louder than he has to once the operator answers him. "I have some very important information on the missing girl from yesterday's monster attack!"

**^V^V^V^**

**Author Notes**

_(This chapter was originally posted on Saturday, May 4th, 2019)_

_(This chapter was substantially edited and reposted on Monday, August 26__th__, 2019)_

I keep going into these chapters thinking that I'm going to wind up with something short or insubstantial. Then I find myself with a lot more to say than I anticipated, and here we are almost 7,000 words later. I guess that part of it comes from giving my background characters too much personality. That's how the nameless firemen turn into Shinji the Klutz and (Ta)Kashi da Chief.

_Okonomiyaki _is a thing that I only discovered while researching Japanese street food. They're also called "savory pancakes", but that description does nothing to justify how majestic they look. Loosely, they have a flour base with all sorts of toppings like shredded cabbage, pork, cheese, onions, octopus, sauces... the possibilities are endless: the name literally translates to, "whatever you like it." In addition to the toppings, the methods of construction are also varied and I can't even come close to describing them. If you want an idea of what you're dealing with, check out the Wikipedia article or search for cooking videos on YouTube. I've never had one before, but my mouth's watering and I'm more than curious. I do a lot of cooking and, while the smells may drive my family out of the house, this is kind of a quest now. Arthur quests for the Holy Grail, Frodo quests for Mount Doom, Seraph quests for the okonomiyaki.

I guess that the only other thing to note here is that, for this story, I'm preserving the order of Japanese names. Surname (family name) comes first, and given name (first name) comes last. That's why Mumen Rider (and narrator) call the missing girl Tomoe rather than Mitsubishi – from my experience, most children are referred to by their given names. Just a little thing, but I thought that it was worth mentioning.

**^V^V^V^**

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

It's hot.

Considering the weather, that doesn't mean so much. But it's the _kind_ of heat that bothers Tomoe. She can take a hot night. Sometimes, she actually prefers them. Especially when she's just had a really cold day and her parents crank up the thermostat as high as it can go and she gets to feel alive again.

But the air's stifling. It's stagnant. It sticks to her skin. The sweat doesn't evaporate: it just sits there, pooling on her bound form and mixing with the dust and ash of the previous day to form a sticky paste. She feels like she's been thrown into an oven and the power's been turned on. It's certainly cramped enough.

There's a sound somewhere out there. Metal rolling on metal. It sounds like the rear doors of a minivan sliding open. Or something like that, anyways. She can't tell where it is. They tied something over her face just as they did her mouth, wrists, and ankles and she can't see anything more than a faint and gauzy light when she opens her eyes. The only mercy there has been that, despite how cramped she's been, it makes sleep easier when she wants to drift off and pretend to be somewhere else.

"Don't say a word," an unkind voice tells her. "If you make a peep, we'll kill you. Nod if you understand."

Tomoe nods. Hands fly over her and she winces. Those hands had torn off her blouse and skirt and tied ropes in their place. They remind her of the monster that attacked the bus. But these hands? These hands scare her a lot more. Even when they loosen the cloth over her mouth and push the tip of a plastic bottle between her teeth, she's terrified of what they'll do to her. She has no idea what's in that bottle and she hesitates.

"Drink," the man – she thinks it's a man, anyways – tells her. She still hesitates. More forcefully, he says, "Drink!"

She obeys. What squirts into her mouth is warm and ugly. It's water, but not any kind that she's comfortable with. It tastes like it came from a well. Brackish, dirty... she almost coughs it back up.

"Don't you dare," the man says. "Don't you dare! Spit that out and we don't feed you!"

Against her better judgment, Tomoe swallows the bitter water and stifles a hacking fit. For a brief moment, she almost expects the man to give her something to eat. Considering the state of the water, it'd probably be moldy bread or rotten meat but she's starving and she'll take it if offered. The only thing that goes in her mouth is the cloth again, followed by the pressure of the knot against the nape of her neck.

The door slides shut. Someone smacks the body of her prison with the palm of their hand twice and calls out, "Take her to the others! Delivery's at daybreak!"

The world around her erupts into sound as an engine roars to life. Then everything is in motion and she has no idea where she's going.

She hopes that someone's looking for her because she's very scared and lonely and not feeling very optimistic.


	4. Chapter 4

The following is a non-profit fan-based story and the author is unaffiliated with ONE, Shueisha, or Viz Media, who own the rights to _One-Punch Man_. Please support the official releases.

**^V^V^V^**

**:: HUMAN EVIL ::**

**by**

**Seraph of Winters Past**

**^V^V^V^**

**Chapter Four**

"**Exposition, Exposition: Throw It Out ASAP!"**

He can't blame the man in front of him, but he can still be a little angry.

"I don't get it," Mumen Rider says. Sweating and short on breath despite the air conditioning, the dark pools under his eyes are visible even through his tinted goggles. He's just as tired in mind as he is in body. "I just... really, I don't get it. Why did you ask me to come in?"

The man across the table stares for a few moments. He blinks a few times, thinks of a few responses, and almost goes with the first one to come to mind: W_hat do you think? To give you a medal? All of you professional heroes just want fortune and fame. You don't care who you hurt in the process._

"To answer questions," he finally says. It's the polite answer. It's the one that Section Leader Kuma would've gone with. The old man doesn't like the Hero Association more than anyone else in uniform does, but he prefers that his men in uniform hold off on the ire unless they do something to deserve it. Some of them are actually decent people. Mumen Rider and the bald man from the Surprise-Attack Plum incident are probably the only ones who've reciprocated. When a man fights crime with nothing more than gumption and a bicycle and actually tries to make life _easier _for the police... well, shucks. He can bite his pride for that. For a while, anyways.

Still, the air's grows tense between them. The silence goes on for longer than it should. It dawns on the policeman that he's missing something. Sighing, he asks, "What do you mean?"

"I've answered all of your questions twice," Mumen Rider says. There's this underlying slurry quality to his voice. It almost sounds like the man's drunk. But that can't be the case, the policeman knows: he's been trained to tell when someone's drunk, and the cyclist is a little too coherent for that. In such close proximity to the man talking for a while, he doesn't smell a lick of liquor on his breath. He's just _tired_.Maybe that explains why the man's talking nonsense.

"I don't-"

"Not you," Mumen Rider tells him, waving his hand. It's the hand that he's been using to support his head, so that little gesture almost sends his head pitching forward onto the table. It wouldn't hurt because, hey, helmet, but the man's every move betrays the effort he's making to stay conscious. "She asked me this already?"

"She?" the policeman asks. "Who's she?"

"Ayame," Mumen Rider says. A few more seconds pass and he corrects himself. "Ayano, I mean. Sorry, I meant Ayano. Or... was it Ayane, I think? Maybe?"

"Who?" the policeman asks, looking over something on his clipboard and making a note. "Who's this Ayano, and what does she do?"

"She answers the phone," the Cyclist For Justice tells him. "When you call the hotline, she tells you that she'll make sure that important people do police things with them. Her son's birthday's coming up, but I was telling her about the Mitsubishi girl. Tomoe, remember?"

The policeman flips through his clipboard some more. Then he does it a few more times. A little lost and maybe a little helpless, he looks up at Mumen Rider and tells him, "What... what questions did she ask you?"

"All of them," Mumen Rider says. "Who are you, what information do you have, how did you come across it... she asked all of these questions."

"All of them?" the policeman asks, flustered. Mumen Rider just lets his head fall to the tabletop like a coconut falling from a tree. It doesn't hurt thanks to the helmet, but he then baps his head against the wood another few times for good measure because he thinks that it really should. The policeman actually means it when he says, "I'm sorry."

"This is the part where I ask if you have any new information on this case," Mumen Rider asks. The policeman opens his mouth to respond but the hero then says, "And _this _is the part where you tell me that it's official policy not to comment on an ongoing investigation."

The policeman actually feels kind of bad about saying it and contemplates saying something else. But that's not the kind of person he is, Mumen Rider knows better, and he doesn't really have much else to offer even if he wanted to. He's kind of forced by circumstance to be disappointing. "...it's official policy not to comment on an ongoing investigation."

"I had to ask," Mumen Rider says forlornly. With a great effort, Mumen Rider pushes himself back into an upright seated position and stares at the man across the table. "Is there anything else that you can ask that can help me help you?"

"Not unless you can tell me more about the perpetrator than..." the policeman studies his notes and finishes with, "...'he was a stocky grey man with grey hair and a pink suit but it might've been red it was covered in dust I think maybe'?"

Mumen Rider tries to stare down at his feet through the table for a few seconds. "In my defense, someone dropped a building on me."

"We'll be looking into this," the policeman says, straightening his tie and standing up from his chair. "We have some of our best men investigating. They'll find something."

The man's got three eyes, Mumen Rider realizes. He doesn't know how he didn't notice it before. Not one, not two, but three eyes.

No, no. Five eyes. Definitely four. He's got four eyes.

Wait. It's three. It's three for sure. He was right the first time. Mumen Rider would stake his concussion on it.

He knows it's not true. He's just not seeing straight. His eyes are all crossed and blurry and the room's kind of wobbling around even though he's sitting still. He can't see things right with his eyes, but his mind's working overtime and he can see things straight in his head. They don't paint a good picture.

"You have your rules," Mumen Rider tells the policeman. "They're there to protect people from abuses of power. I get that. But you have so much to do before you can even focus on someone... before you can even change this from a missing person case to a kidnapping. You've got a horribly contaminated crime scene to pick through. You've got to interview witnesses. You've got to build up profiles. You have to get warrants. We heroes in the Association... we're free to act, but we're not held so accountable. Every moment counts right now. It's been over a day since she disappeared, and I don't know how much longer she has before something bad happens. You do your thing. I'll do mine. I'm not so shackled by..."

The man is now a tree.

He's not a very big tree, nor is it very impressive in any regard. And he's not alone in his arboreal mediocrity. He's one of three planted in a row, and they all collectively look a lot more pleasant than the human he'd just been a moment ago. Mumen Rider blinks a few times. Then he screws his eyes shut tightly to clear his vision and opens his eyes again.

Still a tree.

Mumen Rider looks about himself. The sun's beating down on him and the air's still. He can smell the blacktop baking in the pre-noon heat and the air's sizzling. It's not the air-conditioned room he's expecting to find. In fact, it's not a room at all. The room's behind him, through a couple of brick walls. The trees are beside a sidewalk by the street. Something hard and slender rests within his hand. Looking down, he sees that it's the handlebar of his bicycle. He looks down further and sees his legs straddling the frame. He's mounted up and ready to go.

_When did I come outside? _He shakes his head and asks himself, "Just how hard did that mermaid smack me in the head?"

With the police trapped by rules and regulations and stretched thin by a city being actively torn apart by monsters, he can't afford to wait. 48 hours isn't a hard limit, but time is passing him by and every moment spent sitting there is a moment closer to turning Tomoe's death from a theory into a certainty. Daylight's wasting.

The cyclist kicks off and pedals hard. It takes him a solid three seconds to realize that he's not going anywhere even though his back wheel is spinning freely. In fact, it's spinning more freely than usual. His next thought is something about how he's not falling over with his kickstand up and his feet firmly off the ground, but that's interrupted by a crimson hand waving in front of his eyes.

"Yoohoo," the world's most apathetic voice says. "You in there, Mumen? Coooome back to Earth for me, man."

Mumen Rider turns and winces. Even his tinted goggles fail to fully kill the blinding glare of the sun bouncing off of the bald pate. He raises his hand to shield his eyes and stares for a little before his eyes adjust.

"H-hello," Mumen Rider finally says. "I didn't expect to see you here."

He looks down. There's a good half-meter of air between his tires and the ground. One red-gloved hand firmly holds a plastic bag and the other seizes the seatpost. Bike and rider weigh at least as much as the caped baldy in the yellow tights, but the man's arms aren't even twitching from the effort. That's because there isn't any. A bicycle is nothing to him: the moon itself bears a scar fifty kilometers wide from a feat of strength that the man almost thought about putting some effort into.

"Had to check in," Saitama tells him. "You missed dinner last night. Are you okay, man? You look tired.

The caped man's head splits in two in Mumen Rider's eyes. Our hero shakes his head to clear his vision again and tells him, "I'm fine. I... I crashed for most of yesterday. I slept under what the horoscope assures me is a pretty auspicious sign. Sorry about missing dinner. Stuff came up. Or, came down."

Saitama's head tilts a little and the corners of his mouth fall. He takes good stock of Mumen Rider and says, "Well, glad you got your rest in, but you look like garbage right now. Crap, actually. You mostly look like crap. Have you eaten?"

"... no."

"Well good!" Saitama says, swinging the bag just enough for Mumen Rider to notice it. "Because I had Genos wrap up your share of last night's food. Still kinda warm, too. The man may not have a sense of humor but, if you tell him to take care of leftovers, then he'll package them so good that they'll outlast the heat-death of the Universe."

"That's nice but I have to go," Mumen Rider says. He hits the pedals hard. Nothing happens: the bald man's still got a hold of the bike and the wheels aren't connecting to the pavement. "Look, I'm happy that you came, but-"

"Heeeeeeey," Saitama says. "Hey, hey, hey. What's my second rule for strength training after the exercise?"

Mumen Rider kind of sags in the saddle and exhales slowly. "Three meals a day..."

"Never skip breakfast!" Saitama says. He sets the bike down and tosses one of the bag's cardboard containers to the Cyclist For Justice. Mumen Rider acts on instinct, catching it before he even realizes what he's doing. "And leftovers make the best breakfast! I want to hear your excuse for missing dinner so I can tell Blizzard not to send her gang after you for the inconvenience..."

"I... no," Mumen says. "I appreciate this, Saitama. I really do. But this isn't an energy bar that I can eat on the go. There's a life at stake, I don't have time to sit down, chow down, and tell you everything that's happened!"

**^V^V^V^**

"..and the kicker is that it wasn't even a school bus," Mumen Rider says between bites of steamed octopus. Saitama was right: it's still warm, and not even in that 'been out in the heat all day' kind of way. "It was a prison bus that they painted to look like one! They only filmed the passenger side, so you could see the original paint job on the driver's side."

"Marketing is Ancient Greek to me," Saitama tells him, scrolling down on his mobile phone to check out an article. "But I guess nobody cares about the details. Did it really shoot lasers from its pen-"

"It didn't even have one!" Mumen says, flailing his hands in exasperation and nearly losing the meat from between his chopsticks. "It was all hands!"

Saitama's eyebrows furrow. "I want to see a picture of this thing now, but something tells me that that's not going to happen."

"I want a lot of things to happen," Mumen Rider mumbles. He wipes some sweat from his forehead and looks around. The air's still sizzling but the duo found a nice little shaded park bench not far from the police station to enjoy their meal. As much as Mumen Rider's loathe to admit it, it's exactly what he needs. Oh, he also needs about three weeks' sleep and a dedicated neurologist to look at his head, but this takes care of at least one of his short-term issues.

There aren't many people around and it's only partly because of the heat. Despite the sizzling air and the threat of clouds on the horizon, it's just not safe to go out anymore. Yesterday's monster attack was only the most recent in a long string of increasingly common disasters plaguing cities across the continent. You can't walk two blocks without seeing the scars of some attack, and it's especially bad this close to the abandoned district, the Ghost Town that Saitama calls home. Even if you don't see a collapsed façade, crushed car, or smashed pavement, you'll probably see some other sign of society's decay.

Mumen Rider's looking at one right now. His vision's not the best, especially with that splitting headache and shot nerves, but red's a pretty striking color that grabs your attention from far away. It's splashed all over a poster stuck to the brick wall below an advertisement for the Hero Association, where it comes together to form a blazer worn by a smiling boy utterly at odds with the lettering,

"Have you seen me?" Mumen Rider says quietly, letting some steaming meat hover forgotten before his mouth as he reads it aloud. "Daihatsu Toshi, last seen outside City Z Nishi Elementary School. Disappeared in the aftermath of the Tiger-Level monster Makaitachi-no-Usagi, the Rabbit's Demon Sword. Call this hotline if you have any information..."

The boy's not alone. Now, a missing person having company might not sound terrible, but it is in this context because his company consists of about another thirty broadsheets showcasing missing people plastered against the wall. Some are fresh, the paper smooth and white. Others are old, sun-bleached and wrinkled from exposure. Some are men and women, some are children. Most of those children wear the red uniforms of the City Z Nishi schools, but the blues, greens, and golds of the neighboring school districts form a rainbow tapestry of misery. Tomoe's poster isn't even on that wall: it's too small for every missing person right now. Amidst a thousand seas of posters, it was only a miracle that let him find it.

"I don't know how they're going to find her," he comments. "How can the police find one missing person amongst so many?"

"I dunno," Saitama says. His voice is flat and emotionless, but maybe it's a little moreso than usual as he tells the bicycle enthusiast, "You can't save everyone. You-"

Mumen Rider goes on as if Saitama never spoke. If anything, he speaks louder to shut the man out. "She's not even the only missing student! With every monster attack, the list grows! The pile of paperwork stacks up higher! Her case is going to drown under so many people!"

Saitama looks at the helmeted man for all of five seconds, wearing his ordinary mask of indifference. And then, in a single moment, his face hardens. It's not an angry look, but it's fearsome and determined and Mumen Rider flinches under his sharp eyes.

"Why are you fixated on this one girl?" Saitama asks. "What makes her any different from the other people in the pile? Why should the police drop everything that they're doing to focus on just her? They've got laws for a reason, man. They can't break them on one case."

The questions hit hard. What galls Mumen Rider is that, for the longest time, he doesn't have a good answer. He's so wrapped up in feeling upset and trying to save a life that he hasn't really analyzed why he feels that way. It's only now that he realizes that he's giving someone special treatment, and the thought's a little disturbing. In the end, he can't think of a good reason. He can only give the one that comes naturally.

"Because I was there," Mumen Rider says as he sets his chopsticks down in the cardboard package. "I didn't stop it. I literally handed her over to a kidnapper. This is-"

"-not your fault," Saitama says firmly. "Nobody knew that some old fart would up and steal a kid in the middle of a monster attack. You did plenty of good out there already, man. It sucks when one gets away, but one did. This is where the police take over. We're not detectives, but they are. They're trained to handle this. Alright?"

"No," Mumen Rider says. That sickening feeling in his gut is rising, and he can't hold it down. It's not the food, but he doesn't trust himself to take another bite and he hands Saitama the container. "It's on me, Saitama. I'm wrapped up in this. It doesn't make sense, and I _know_ that it doesn't, but someone's missing because I made a mistake."

Saitama doesn't say anything. He just stares through half-hooded eyes at the man beside him and waits. And by not saying anything, he exerts a kind of breaking pressure. People aren't comfortable with silence and can't just leave it alone: like a vacuum, it's human nature to fill it. Mumen Rider expects Saitama to fill it for him, but the bald man's more resilient than he looks. _Saitama _isn't the one that needs convincing: Mumen Rider is, and both of them know it. Saitama leaves him to fill in the blanks, leaves him to fumble for things to say, leaves him searching from some kind of explanation. Something to satisfy himself: something to put a cap on that unsettling sensation in his gut.

It works.

"Because..." Mumen Rider has it. He just has to find the right words. They come in time. Time and words are the key. "Because there's still time. Because I've got things inside of me that the police haven't been able to pull out and can't use yet. Because I'll get them out faster if I act on what I know but can't put into words than I will if I sit in a questioning booth all day. Because until I find her or I'm satisfied that I really did do everything that I could, I'm going to know that I gave up on someone. And that's not who I am, Saitama. I don't give up on people."

Saitama slaps him on the knee, startling the living daylights out of him. It's delivered with only half as much force is necessary to break a bone, so that smarts a bit. "Oy, there you go. Feel better?"

"A bit," Mumen Rider says. "It's still stressful, but it's good to get that into words. Thanks. It's just... I don't know if there's enough time. The police don't have enough time to find her. Tomoe doesn't have time to be found. I don't have enough time to remember some important little detail that I've forgotten. There's just not enough time! I've got all of this excitement, this _anxiety_ inside of me, and I feel like if I don't do something...!"

The air goes quiet. Saitama becomes aware of the man staring at him, eyes and mouth held open shockingly wide. This time, it's Saitama who blinks first, and he does it a lot faster than Mumen Rider did. "What?"

"It's you," Mumen Rider says.

"It's me?" Saitama asks. "I'm what now?"

"You're fast enough," Mumen Rider tells him. "I've seen you move. You can outrun a car. You can jump so fast that you leave after-images. You kicked off the moon so hard that you reached the Earth while holding your breath. Other people worry about time, but not you Saitama."

"That's not how-"

"Saitama!" Mumen Rider interrupts. "With your help, we could turn over the whole city in a day. I'm not at my best right now, but you could take out the man who did this in one punch. I beg of you: will you help me?"

Saitama looks at the eager hero for a few seconds. Then he gives Mumen Rider a half-hearted smile, which is enough for him.

"Ahhhhh, sure," Saitama says. "It's not like I have much else to do. King's in the middle of an RPG, Bang's out of town looking for some old student of his, Blizzard's probably cleaning her nails or something I don't know, and Genos is going all God of Cleaning on the apartment and I'm not gonna lie, I want to be pretty far away from him for an afternoon. I can-"

Of course. Just, of course. That's exactly the moment that a phone rings. The noise is so sudden and shrill that Mumen Rider almost jumps out of his seat. Saitama, actually looking at the phone in question, goes quiet. The screen's presently dominated by a portrait of a young man with blond hair and robotic eyes and a prompt to accept an incoming call. The two heroes share an annoyed glance.

"One second," Saitama says. He accepts the call and presses the phone against his ear. "Speak of the devil and he will appear. Yeah, I hear you Genny. Nothing unflattering. Yeah, I found him. He says he's sorry for missing dinner but he was checking out his horo-... Huh? No, I don't... why would I have thirteen thousand kilos of crab risotto on me? It's a legitimate question and I want to know the answer! Well, context is important."

Saitama just kind of stares off into space for a solid minute while the man on the other end rants and raves. Mumen Rider can't hear the individual words, but he recognizes the determined and unrelenting tone. Mumen Rider pretty much sinks in his seat as the words drone on. He drops about as much as his mood as this cold sense of anticipation swells up within him.

"Oh," Saitama finally says, breaking the silence on their end. "All of City Z probably doesn't have half that much, I don't think. Uh huh. Yeah. That does sound like a pain in the neck. No, you didn't call it one, but that's what it translates to. Ice cubes? What? Why would it breathe...? Look, I'll do what I can, but it's going on your card. That's none of your... well, you left your wallet on the table, so I thought it was fair game. No, I haven't. Uh huh. Yeah-huh. Nope. That one wasn't me, but I might've dated her for a week in high school. Just forget it, alright? I'll be there."

Saitama hands up and gives Mumen Rider a sympathetic look. It's almost a mercy when Saitama delivers the bad news of 'something better to do.'

"Genos needs help," Saitama says. "Something about a buffalo, a nine-iron, and some ice cubes."

Previously overstimulated and preoccupied by how slow things had been moving, Mumen Rider suddenly finds that he doesn't want the moment to pass. Dully, hollowly, he asks, "Are there lives at stake?"

"Several people are already dead," Saitama says, about as enthusiastic about it as he is with anything. "The threat level just got bumped from Wolf to Tiger."

Wolf. Tiger. Demon. Dragon. God.

The chain of progression on a scale of human misery. About the only thing that Mumen Rider's able to take care of on his own is Wolf: monsters or forces threatening the small-scale loss of life or property. He's just a man with a bicycle and a lot of daring: he doesn't stand much of a chance against the vast majority of even those, but he and the rest of the Class C heroes can at least slow them down or make them take notice. It's so weak on the pecking order of public nuisance that most people are unaware that there's even a category for it.

Yesterday's monster? Your standard Tiger. A threat to great numbers of people. Mumen Rider can't really do much to faze them, and his standard approach is to stand in their way and get his face beaten in until someone more competent – someone from Classes B and A, usually – steps in to save the day.

Above that, it's actually kind of hysterical to put Mumen Rider into the scenario. There's not even much point describing them. Demons can level or depopulate an entire city before finally being stopped by the Class S heroes. Dragons can destroy whole countries in their rampages, and only the absolute strongest heroes on the planet can face them with any hope of victory. And Gods? Game Over. Everyone dies. Literally everyone. End of story.

_I'd only slow you down, _Mumen Rider thinks to himself. _And you'd be negligent to ignore the lives of thousands in favor of one._

"Sorry," Saitama says. "I've got to take this."

"Good luck," Mumen Rider tells him. "Really. I know that you don't need it. Go be a hero."

Saitama places the leftovers on his seat and stands up. He heads down a long train of thought as he stares down the street, trying to figure out where the nearest restaurant supply store is and whether Genos's credit card can handle it. He tries to put himself in a cook's shoes and mumbles, "I should probably start close to home."

Mumen reels as though slapped. "I beg your pardon?"

"Just thinking aloud, Mumen!" Saitama says without looking back. He rests his hands on his hips and goes on listing businesses close to his home, because at least he's familiar with them and he'll waste less time that way. But for that much seafood? He might have to hike on over to City J. It's where he killed the Deep Sea Freak, so there might be something worth checking out there.

"Well, I'm gonna go," Saitama says, turning around. "Gotta chase down thirteen tons of crab risotto for Genos. Good luck, and I'll... oh?"

Mumen Rider's half a block away and receding fast. Saitama can almost see smoke rising from the furious tires. He can also see him drive-by dunking the leftovers into a garbage can: the man takes those littering laws seriously, after all.

"...okay," Saitama eventually mutters. "But I would've saved those."

**^V^V^V^**

Five flights of stairs.

With all of the riding he's done, after all of the improbable situations that he's survived, and after the heartburn of over-seasoned octopus with spicy noodles, five flights of stairs shouldn't be that much of a challenge. But in the heat, at the tail end of all of that, it's just the final straw. Every step seems harder than the one before and, while he knows that he's losing weight from all of the sweat, he somehow feels himself getting heavier. It's torture on the knees.

"Pain is.. just... w-weakness... leaving the b-body," he tells himself as a little shopping bag drags against the steps ahead of him. But he's never been good at lying, so that doesn't go over well. "Why... _huff..._ does _nobody_ ins-s-stall... _urk_... elevators in these _danchi?_ Why does f-fate con... consp... _conspire_ against me? _Wheeeeeze... _At least I made it... _huff_... easy on myself and l... le... leeeeeft the bike downstairs...!"

_Danchi_. It may be an unfamiliar term, but it's a familiar concept that you've probably seen executed before. It's the local flavor of public housing, otherwise known as cramming as many people into as small a space as possible. With dwindling birthrates and a rapidly shrinking life expectancy, the government could probably afford to build smaller complexes with larger living spaces. After all, as the population thins, they needn't be packed together so tightly. But... well, there are fewer people paying the bills, and people make do with what they have.

What they have is decaying and outdated buildings with a severe lack of accessibility. All new buildings are required to have elevators to service the disabled and elderly, but this one's a relic of an older time when a booming population needed to build a lot of buildings in a big hurry, and damn the amenities: you pulled yourself up the stairs by your bootstraps if you had to. You pulled yourself up by your _elbows_ if your legs gave out, and Mumen Rider's on the verge of doing just that.

But Mumen Rider's very determined and he makes it to his destination with a few steps left in him. He takes a moment to catch his breath – a luxury, he knows, and one that he can scarcely afford with a life at stake – but it's probably better to break this as Mumen Rider, the Cyclist For Justice, than the sweaty guy who needs to catch his breath. Coming off of that, it's probably best to put on a change of clothing...

He looks around. He's on the landing for the fifth floor of an external staircase. To his right is arrayed the slums and projects of City Z in all of their glory. To his left, a concrete wall. In front of him, an empty hallway. Behind him, an empty staircase. Nobody's watching. Good. That makes this a little more dignified.

He sits down on the top stair and strips off his protective gear. Even the goggles come off, leaving his glasses the only things left on his head. All of that gear comes off and he sets them down by what looks like an abandoned apartment's door. Then he peels off his shirt and gasps as a hot breeze slams into a toned but scarred and battered body drenched in sweat. The jacket alone probably takes off about four kilos, and it's not because of the thick leather that he's worn since his motorcycle days. He takes a towel and fresh T-shirt out of his little bag – items bought in a hurry from a little gift shop that he along the way – and starts wiping off the sweat before donning new apparel, and it's at that moment that he hears a door creak open

"Oooooh!" a young voice gasps out behind him. Mumen Rider slowly turns his head and sees what, for a brief moment, passes for a ghost. She's young – how young, he can't exactly tell – but she's got alabaster skin and dark hair, an upturned nose and pale lips presently pursed into a little "o" as she stares at him with very distinctive, very wide brown eyes. He can't focus on anything else. That face has haunted him for over a day and the shock of seeing her almost sends him tumbling down the stairs.

Scratch that.

"T-Tomoe?!" he gasps, standing up too fast for his own good. But his leather top's made a nice puddle of sweat by his feet and, once more, I must reiterate that a danchi wasn't built up to modern code. Nowadays, when you build public housing, you need to do something about the steps so people don't slip and kill themselves on the way down. Most of them use adhesive strips with a rough texture, or paint them with anti-skid paint, but this _is _an older building. "Waaagh!"

Annnnnd down he goes.

**^V^V^V^**

"Protect the head," he says, nursing a little cup of tea between his hands as he kneels on a tatami mat before a box fan. "It's the first thing that you learn when riding a bicycle, scooter, motorcycle... any kind of vehicle that leaves you exposed. It's why helmets should be mandatory."

"I've never seen anyone put on a helmet so fast," says the girl kneeling across from him at the low table. "And it happened so fast...!"

_Most kidnappers know their victims, _he thought after hearing Saitama's words. It was a revelation of sorts: one that the bald man's idle contemplation dragged out of him. If he was going to find clues, he had to start at the Mitsubishi household. And seeing the girl standing there...

Despite first impressions, she's _not_ Mitsubishi Tomoe. Little things set the two apart, and Mumen Rider would've figured it out quicker if building codes weren't so lax about fifty years ago. Her hair's longer and tied back in a way that Tomoe's wasn't, and her nose isn't quite so upturned. She's a little older, and this is obvious in a few ways. The first is that she's taller, her limbs are a little longer, and the tank-top and shorts she's wearing emphasize a figure just beginning to mature. The second is that she's mentioned that she's about three months away from reaching the age of consent twice now, which is really, _really _awkward for Mumen Rider because he's twice her age and it's not something that he really needs to know. In fact...

"Where are your parents?" he asks. He tries not to sound desperate, but he's never been good at hiding things and his voice cracks a little. "I was looking for them, actually. It's about your sister..."

"They're out," Mitsubishi Yuki tells him. She shifts a little bit closer – just a couple of centimeters but, under these circumstances, that puts her about three kilometers too far inside his personal space. "They're making the rounds putting out posters, and they're probably not coming home for another few hours. After everything that happened, they didn't feel safe with me going out in public."

Mumen Rider is a very courteous and civilized fellow, but his mind floods with profanity too vile and voluminous to reproduce here. He curses his luck, curses the circumstances, curses the man who ran away with Yuki's sister, but mostly curses his luck. The curses generally involve impure relationships with common barnyard animals, if you must know.

"Well!" he says far, far too quickly and loudly. Mostly he says it loud in hopes that the neighbors are home and someone, _anyone _hears a little of what he's saying and doesn't misunderstand the purpose of his visit. "Miss Mitsubishi! I am here concerning your sister's disappearance! My name is Tan**MUMEN RIDER**, yes! My name is Mumen Rider, and I'm here concerning y-"

"I know who you are," Yuki says. "I'm your biggest fan."

_FFFFFFFFFFF-_

Mumen Rider hunches his shoulders and does his best to obscure his pectoral muscles under the folds of his clean shirt. This only serves to draw Yuki's attention to his arms – strong, lean, taut – and the variety of animals passing through his head diversifies to some of the violent ones that you don't keep on a farm. The kinds with sharp teeth and venom.

"May I have another?" Mumen Rider says, offering the young woman his teacup. Her hero's calling in a favor, so that's pretty much a command: she takes it and heads for the kitchen. The bait, that is. The bait's also the cup. It's bait because what he catches is a few moments to collect his thoughts and figure out how he's going to do this. The metaphor's mixed because he caught Yuki, not time, but that's mostly because he really, _really _needs to organize his scattershot mind. Getting all banged up yesterday didn't help, going all night without sleep helped less, and coming around to find a preteen alternatively panicking over her fallen hero and gawking at his bare chest helped least of all.

Nope. Still scatterbrained.

Unable to focus on what he's going to say and how, his attention drifts. For the first time, he takes in his surroundings. _Really _takes them in. What stands out first is just how close the walls seem. His own apartment's not much smaller than this, but he lives alone and he rarely spends much time there. His home's spartan and uncluttered. This one, though? It's well-lived in, as one would expect from a family of four. The way of life is simpler in City Z, especially compared to some foreign places, but you don't cram so many people into such a small place in any country without accumulating marks of their lives.

He's sitting in the _washitsu_. If you're one of those foreigners who don't live near City Z or its sister cities, then you're probably not familiar with the concept. With modernization creeping into every facet of increasingly cramped homes, the washitsu's a semi-spacious room with more traditional trappings. Tatami mats, sliding paper door, decorative alcove... it's used for entertaining guests where the rest of the home is meant for _living._ Even then, in a quiet and contemplative place, the family's left its marks.

There are little wooden shelves lining the walls of the room. Most of them are in a little alcove by the sliding door, but you can't stretch out from any point in the room without touching one of the shelves. What dominates the shelves are ceramic figurines. Most are little things: memorabilia from celebrity and royal weddings, or bits of merchandising from television programs. Animals, superheroes, traditionally-garbed priests, mythical beasts, working people... name it, there's a figure of it somewhere in the room. There's even a pair of miniature Mumen Riders to his left!

What immediately catches his attention is this fifteen-centimeter-tall sculpture of a _miko_: a shrine maiden or priestess. Her details are simplified and exaggerated in that way that miniatures must to be recognizable from a distance, and the red-and-white attire draws his eyes to it like a moth to flames. It clutches a silver bell in its hands. Not ceramic painted to look like silver, no: real silver. The whole figurine had to have been formed around that bell: it's a separate element.

In a moment of idle contemplation, Mumen Rider slowly reaches out and flicks the bell with a finger. He doesn't mean to make much of a noise, but Blast does it ring! It's a small sound, but it's clear and it sure does carry a long way and it _pierces_. He actually has to press a hand against it to stop the noise because it would just keep going otherwise.

His visual tour of the room brings him back to the door through which Yuki receded. Or, the framed picture above it. It's a woodprint: one of the old kinds, the ones that have more or less disappeared thanks to modern printing technology. There's no mistaking it: the texture of the paper, the way the ink lays thickly on the surface... it's an antique. This one depicts an aristocratic woman in a kimono walking through her garden as cherry blossom petals fall around her. Considering how he found Tomoe's identity in the first place, he finds its placement here oddly apropos.

After a moment, his eyes drift elsewhere in the room. His gaze reaches the alcove, and there he finds photographs caged behind glass and plastic frames. Family pictures, mostly: the lives of the two girls as they grew up, and what he assumes to be the parents' wedding. The longer he studies it, the more he sees the lines connecting the four family figures. The girls inherited their father's nose and their mother's lips, but there's something about the chin that sets the girls apart from each other and he can't quite tell which parent gave which girl the shape.

Now, he doesn't know why, but the picture that catches his attention the most is the one next to a life-size figurine of a grey cat. A small girl with her back turned to the camera – a girl smaller than Yuki, smaller than Tomoe... a picture so old that it could be either of them – walks amongst a flock of pigeons. They peck the ground or waddle about, ignoring the stunt-limbed infant with dark hair. Why they haven't flown away, he's got no idea. He can't even confirm that it's a real photograph, and that it's not some photoshopped stock image picked up at a gift shop. He can only infer its relevance to the family by its placement between so many intimate pictures.

And then the cat figurine blinks.

Mumen Rider stares at it for a few seconds, making sure that he really saw it. The figurine blinks again, and Mumen Rider realizes that it's not a figurine at all. Curious, cautious, a real cat with grey fur stares down at him from that shelf so still that he'd have never realized that it was alive unless he was looking right at it.

"_This is how you make a cat love you," _Blizzard had once said while watching a black-and-white stray stare at them from outside of Saitama's window one night not long ago, while everyone else hooted and hollered over dinner and a card game. Somehow, the furious beating of King's engine didn't drive the cat away. _"A cat can read your nature through your eyes, no matter your intention or state of mind. But it looks for this sign..."_

Mumen Rider and the cat stare at each other. Now that they have the other's undivided attention, neither of them blink. He's got no idea if the cat can see his eyes through his tinted goggles, but he acts as though it does. Slowly, so slowly that it hurts, he closes his eyes and then opens them just as slowly. He doesn't get a response at first: just that predatory, searching gaze.

_Are you Tomoe's friend? _He wonders. _Do you miss her?_

He slowly blinks again. The cat blinks back slowly. Then it's like they've been friends forever: the cat hops down from its shelf and trots over to Mumen Rider's side. He holds his hand out to pet it, but the cat beats him to the punch and thrusts its head up so forcefully that it knocks his hand away. Then it jumps onto his lap and presses against his stomach like it owns him, purring like a chainsaw, and Mumen Rider can't help but smile at the affectionate thing.

"Yeah, you're friends with everyone, aren't you?" he asks as he ruffles its neck. The trick with the blinking may be new, but he's always taken to animals and they've always seemed to lower their guard around him. He's not in any position to complain: it makes rescuing them from trees and ditches a whole lot easier, that's for sure.

"I'm back!" Yuki declares, roughly sliding open the door with her foot. The cat takes one shocked glance at her, flattens its ears, and bolts. Mumen Rider grunts. His leggings may also be made of leather, but the cat's claws are _sharp _and he feels it as its hindlegs kick off against his lap. The animal bolts past Yuki, almost knocking her over, and she shouts after it, "Cinder! Bad girl!"

"Ow," Mumen Rider mutters, rubbing his thigh. The girl kneels down in her old spot and hands the cyclist his piping-hot teacup. She tells him, "I'm so sorry for that. She doesn't like anybody and I've got no idea why. What did we ever do to her?"

"I don't know," Mumen Rider says. "Maybe you come on too strongly? Anyways, I..."

"I'm the chairwoman of your fan club at City Z Nishi Junior High," she says, apropos of nothing.

_So we're not skipping a beat, are we? _Mumen Rider furrows his eyebrows and, doing his best not to seem rude, tells her, "Look, Miss, I need you to concentrate..."

"I've been on your mailing list since before you joined the Association," Yuki says. "I've got my membership card. Can you sign it for me?"

"I have a mailing...?" Mumen Rider's voice drifts off. He shakes his head violently and tells himself that enough is enough. He tightens the straps of his helmet so much that it hurts and says, "Nevermind! Miss Mitsubishi! I'm here about the kidnapping of your sister! It is vitally important that-"

"Kidnapping?" Yuki blurts. "But, the list-"

"Look, I'll sign your T-shirt or whatever later," Mumen Rider says in a rush. He doesn't like doing it, but he can't slow down now or the girl will just keep talking over him and he'll get bogged down in hormones or whatever it is that goes through a star-struck preteen's brains. "Yesterday, I was a witness to the attack on your sister's school bus and I saw her kidnapper. I came here because I've talked to the Blond Bomber and he didn't give me anything, and I've been to the police and I've been unable to give _them_ anything. I have nowhere else to go. I came here to ask some questions because if I don't get them here, I don't know where I'll go to find them. Now, Miss: can you help me help your sister?"

Mouth agape, Yuki stares up at him. Her eyes swivel back and forth in very subtle ways, tracking thoughts that he can't see. At first, he thinks that he came onto the topic too strongly and he's traumatized the poor girl. It's not easy having your hero snap at you. What comes out of her mouth next is a total surprise.

"Kidnapped?"

Mumen Rider blinks. "Yes, kidnapped. I need to know if-"

"But, the police said... I mean..." she fumbles for words. All sorts of expressions pass over her face: expressions of fear, of anger, of confusion, of sadness... she goes through the whole emotional spectrum in seconds and then asks for seconds and thirds while she's at it. "Mom and dad said that the police said that she's just missing... you mean, she was...?"

_Blast, _he thinks. _I really have scarred her for life._

"Hey," he says, reaching out with one hand and gripping her by the shoulder. "Hey. Come back to me, now. I'm here and I'm trying to help. I've got a few questions. Are you with me? Alright, you're with me. First, when did your parents tell you that? Was it today?"

She shakes her head. The motion's limited but rapid.

"Yesterday, huh?" Mumen Rider says. He does some arithmetic in his head. He called the police station a good three hours ago, and he left no more than ninety minutes later. In that time, he's had the chance to eat lunch, find the Mitsubishi residence, and pedal a quarter of the way across the city. And yet, somehow, he still beat the news home. Now, granted, it's entirely possible that the parents were contacted first and they've yet to relay the message to Yuki, but she's home alone. Something tells him that, if he had two children and one got kidnapped, he'd have made a call to the other one to let them know to lock the doors and bar the windows because damn it, _the other one could be next._

_How far behind are they? _He wonders. _How long will it be before the police move on this? _The clock in his head ticks down to the imprecise, dodgy, but foreboding 48 hours.

"Yuki?" he says, getting her attention again. "The man who took your sister was kind of stout. He had short, stiff, grey hair. He had brown eyes and he had pale skin. Does that sound familiar?"

Tomoe shakes her head more slowly this time and tells him, "You just described half of the old men in the country.'

"I wish that I could be more specific," he says, cursing his luck. _If only I had something to jog my memory. There's something that I'm missing. Something important! But what? What am I missing?!_

And then it hits him.

"Most kidnappers know their victims," he mumbles. Yuki tilts her head and stares at him. In an instant, his entire body-language changes. He seemed flustered before. He seemed... unsure? Now there's this kind of resolve in him, and he sounds exactly like he knows what he's talking about. He locks gazes with her and says, "The end of the school year is almost here. Did your sister get a yearbook?"

**^V^V^V^**

**Author Notes**

_(This chapter was originally posted on Monday, May 13th, 2019)_

_(This chapter was substantially edited and reposted on Friday, September 6__th__, 2019)_

If you've read the bonus manga chapter "Pork Cutlet Bowl" at the end of Volume 7, then you should recognize a few names and ideas mentioned during Mumen Rider's trip to the police station. It's actually one of my favorite bits in the manga and, while it hasn't been shown or referenced in the anime (so far) and I'm sticking to the anime, I felt like I had to pay homage to it.

Yuki kind of came out of nowhere. I originally planned to have Mumen Rider find the parents grieving their daughter's supposed death, but then I thought about him changing clothes before heading in because that's just the kind of thing that I think about, then I thought about having someone see him changing, him having a fan club, and things just kind of snowballed from there. The story's kind of depressing, so I ran with it to lighten things up a little. I don't have any plans to use her again, but she was fun while she lasted.

While One Punch Man doesn't take place in Japan, the culture's heavily influenced by it. Like the Okonomiyaki and cherry blossoms last time, and those magnificent school buses in the first chapter, I felt like I owed it to the source material to do some research and put to words some of those things that we've seen in imported media over the years that we've never really thought much about. So, now I know more about Japanese public housing, and it's made me aware of just how cluttered and messy my home is by comparison. Way to make me self-conscious, you anime where a guy dresses up in hamburger condiment colors and punches out aliens and monsters...

I guess that the last thing to note is that I don't really have a specific place in the timeline for this story to take place. The only thing that I have set in stone is that it's sometime after Season One of the anime. But we've got Saitama hanging out with King and Blizzard, and I've at least hinted at Garou once or twice so far. I suppose that the best way to look at this is that it kind of occupies a spot within Season Two, but don't think too hard about where. In that regard, it makes as much sense continuity-wise as your typical anime tie-in movie. That technically makes this an Alternate Continuity fanfic, but... well, I guess it is.

**^V^V^V^**

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

He has big eyebrows, a bigger chin, and the biggest arms.

Those are about the only things that anybody can remember about him. Sure, he's got the suit and kind of looks like a gorilla, but he's sitting at the bar and he's not giving people a reason to notice him. In a world where monsters and aliens are accepted fact, you don't tend to notice the big guy unless he looks at you strangely. And the one person he _is _looking at? Well, he's busy.

"You should've seen it!" Blond Bomber roars, one hand clutching an icy bottle of beer and the other wrapped around a woman's shoulder. Three other women in various stages of undress hover in his orbit while others fawn. His friends holler and build him up, telling him that he's a stud and he's got this. Bully on him for attracting such a following, pity on the jilted boyfriends standing ineffectually at the rear.

"He doesn't look so tough," the man in the suit muses, pressing his hand against his ear. "I bet that I could-"

"_Don't engage, Mountain Ape,"_ a voice tells him. _"Stick to the plan."_

Moments pass. The men and woman down the countertop grow more raucous. Blond Bomber's hands grow more daring over his admirers' bodies.

"I am not going to lie," the suited man says, turning his head away lest someone notice that he's spying on the hero of the hour. "My patience is growing thin, Eyelashes."

"_We're almost there,"_ the voice tells him. _"Just be ready."_

He almost doesn't make it. The men and women get louder. A few more people – people who heard the news that the hero of the hour is at the local pub – enter for a sight of the man and to be what they assume to be a part of history. They want to say that they knew him when. They don't know just how right they are.

_No class, _the man known as Mountain Ape thinks as he goes to tap his earpiece again. He really wants to do something. _Hard to believe that someone so crass should rise so close to my mistress's level so quickly... and to come within striking distance of _me, _while we are at it!_

"_We're here,"_ Eyelashes's voice rings in through the earpiece. _"Get ready."_

Mountain Ape glances behind himself. Through the glass doors, he can see a black luxury sedan easing to a halt on the street. The rear window rolls down and he catches sight of a black-haired woman staring back at him. She smiles, turns her attention to the man with the blue-and-white spandex, and a barely-perceptible chill runs up everyone's spine. Mountain Ape smiles, pulling a little black rectangle from his pocket. Such a little thing's about to cause so much misery...

He's _salivating_.

"Quiet, quiet!" Blond Bomber shouts over the laughter and general cavorting, pointing his bottle at the television mounted behind the counter. "This is it! This is it!"

He can't kill the noise completely, but it does drop off considerably. Someone finds the remote and cranks up the volume just as a brunette on screen starts speaking.

"...Yesterday, saw the emergence of a new hero to our community," the anchorwoman declares. "A hero whose powers beggar comprehension. Though ranked in Class B for now, his unprecedented potential will no doubt see him rise to the highest echelons of the Hero Association! I refer, of course... to _**Blond Bomber!**_"

The man's portrait dominates the screen and the bar erupts into noise. Cheers, whoops, claps on the back, squeals of joy... they're almost enough to make Mountain Ape miss the next part. He can't hear the words, but he can feel vibrations in his ear that should be sound. He chances a look backward for confirmation. The raven-haired woman's green eyes glow powerfully in the car.

_Go time,_ Mountain Ape thinks. He raises the black rectangle and points one of its long faces at Blond Bomber, and everything happens very quickly after that.

"With a moment's concentration, he can pound monsters flat!" the brunette's voice declares as stock footage of an explosion plays out. The flames wipe across the screen, transitioning to one of the morning's still photographs of the psychic standing proudly before a smashed bus. "None need fear for..."

"Whaaaaat are you doing?!" one of the women screams, jumping off of the star's lap in horror. Suddenly, nobody's looking at the screen anymore.

"Huh, what?" Blond Bomber asks, startled. There's a cool breeze on his nipples and, while it's not unpleasant, it's pretty shocking. He looks down and can't contain a high pitched shriek of confusion.

His uniform's coming apart. Just... all of the seams are detaching: the thread just pulling itself out. First his cape falls off, and then his chest is bared, and then down to his waist...

"**WHAT THE F-"**

His hands go to his crotch as the crowd gasps.

"It's so small!" one of the women laughs. Another woman's jilted boyfriend snickers, "I was afraid of _that?_ Hah!"

Blond Bomber tries and fails to preserve his modesty. Nobody notices Mountain Ape casually walk out the door and slide into the waiting car.

"Good work, Mountain Ape," Hellish Blizzard says as she takes the phone and swipes right through several dozen photographs and a video of her psychic assault. She smiles again. This is going to be _rich._

_Nobody drops a building on a friend and gets away with it_, she thinks. _And I have one hell of a bargaining chip for our newest prospective addition to the Blizzard Bunch._


	5. Chapter 5

The following is a non-profit fan-based story and the author is unaffiliated with ONE, Shueisha, or Viz Media, who own the rights to _One-Punch Man_. Please support the official releases.

**^V^V^V^**

**:: HUMAN EVIL ::**

**by**

**Seraph of Winters Past**

**^V^V^V^**

**Chapter Five**

"**Riding Down Injustice!"**

Moritsu Izumu hasn't had a good day.

Nobody has, lately. The staff and students of City Z Nishi Elementary School? Even less of a good day than anyone else.

The air's been downright oppressive with grief and fear. You can see it when you walk through the halls, in the hollow gazes of the students. You can see it in the total silence shared between the teachers as they stare at the latest casualty reports. You can feel it in the floor.

No, really. You can. The hallways once thundered with the footsteps of many hundreds of students, heralded by the ringing of an electronic bell. The ground shook with their passage. It was like a human stampede. Now, though? Now, the herd's been thinned a bit. There's not so much weight behind the rush of children. And the ones that remain? They don't move with the same energy that they used to. They're like zombies: the life's all gone out from them, asking the same question: _Am I next?_

A few months ago, City A was devastated by a monster attack. A purple beast calling itself the Vaccine Man leveled entire neighborhoods and tumbled down tall buildings. City D? A man the size of ten skyscrapers stacked on top of each other smashed it underfoot before the hero known as King slew it with one punch. The Deep Sea King and his subjects, the Sea Folk, carved a path of destruction through City J before finally being brought down by the desperate actions of a few. And then there's City A, again… destroyed properly this time by visitors from space and their mighty warship. Everybody knows someone who died in those attacks. Every day, the tide of evil moves in further against the shores of human progress and washes away something else that can't be replaced.

But this time, the tragedy's hit closer to home. This time, students of the school have come directly under attack. Sure, students have periodically gone missing or died in the attacks of monsters and villains, but the many-handed monster's attack has been the single deadliest incident to have impacted the school. There were twenty students, three teachers, and a driver on the bus. A dozen students and two teachers were injured, five students are still hospitalized, one student is missing, and one teacher is dead.

Walking through the hallways, students in red give Moritsu a wide berth. The old man with the shock of grey hair feels dirty about it because he knows that it's a sign of respect: he's a symbol of their shared pain. He's one of the teachers who survived. He's reminded of it by the gazes of the students and teachers as he passes them by. More than the gash on his cheek, the way that they look at the gauze pad covering it brings it home. He wonders if Professor Soryu goes through this every time someone looks at the bandaged arm that still seeps blood.

Comfortably wrapped in a shell of chilled air blasting on high from the AC all day, Moritsu's actually forgotten just how hot it's been. He even wore his jacket – his red jacket – for crying out loud! He opens the door and the heat slams into him like a fist, physically stunning him. The sweat runs quickly and he gasps at the thin, wet air. Class is out for the day, and _this _is what he has to pass through to get home. And he just can't wait to get home: it's a long holiday weekend, and he's got all of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to himself. He'd really like to keep it that way.

He looks to the west and frowns. It's getting darker a lot earlier than he'd expect, and the reason lies on the horizon: black clouds are rolling in from the distance, and the air's supersaturated with moisture. He can actually _feel _the air sweating, the water oozing out of air too thin to support its weight. It's something that he's well-versed in: science is his forte, and he's been teaching it for twenty years.

"Sweat cools you off by evaporating," he mumbles, taking the first step out into the employee parking lot. The students are all exiting by other doors, but only the staff and teachers go out the back way like this. "It draws heat from the body to turn to vapor. But, if the air can't absorb the water, the moisture and heat just sit there. And you get warmer because your sweat's not doing its job, so you sweat more, but you're not getting cooler because your sweat's not evaporating..."

He shakes his head in dry amusement. He's giving a lecture, and to who? Nobody. It's something that he'll bring up on Monday, when he gets back from his camping trip. The threat of rain gives him pause, but all of the attacks on the city have convinced him that he should enjoy the little things while they last. It'll be nice to escape the chaos for a little. Ironically, the lawless wilderness is probably safer than the well-watched cities right now. And you can't get much more alone than out in the woods.

_Sckrreeeech!_

Moritsu turns around, startled, clutching his keys like his life depends on it. Those and his handbag are poor weapons against a mugger, but it's all that he's got under the circumstances. He stares in panic for a few seconds before realizing that he's just watching a man on a bicycle skidding to a stop on the other side of a chicken-wire fence.

_Not a monster_, Moritsu thinks. _Not a thief: just a man. Oh, thank the gods._

And then he sees the green helmet and brown pads.

_Oh damn my luck. No, no, no..._

It's hard not to recognize him. He may not be the most popular hero, but he's probably one of the most distinctive. Certainly more than the Blizzard Bunch in their black suits. He's got a very striking outline and Moritsu can't think of anyone else who dresses in pumpkin colors. He's seen Mumen Rider's visage every Tuesday when the Hero Association Fan Club meets in the art classroom and, while most of the children draw crude likenesses of Amai Mask, Terrible Tornado, King, or the Demon Cyborg, the Cyclist For Justice gets a good number of drawings for being a local.

And Moritsu tore them down because he was utterly convinced that the man was dead.

"H-hello, Mumen Rider!" Moritsu says, trying to affect an amicable voice. The man's rounding the fence post and advancing into the parking lot like he's on a mission. "How can I help you?"

Mumen Rider stops about half a meter away: uncomfortably close. Moritsu notices a few things about him in the process. The first is that, despite wearing what seems like a fresh set of clothing, the man smells terrible and the wet marks of sweat seep through even his black leather attire. He's had to ride hard and fast through this stifling air, and he's not making any effort to hide it. The second is that what little skin is visible is cut, bruised, and battered. The man has somehow had a worse day than everyone at the school combined. Then, he notices that the younger man is taller and stronger than him. He doesn't bulge and ripple with muscles like Darkshine, Puri-Puri Prisoner, or any of the Tanktop Army, but he's worked himself whipcord-thin and he's more fit than most athletes ever will be. But worst of all? Worst of all is that the always-chipper man who fetches balloons from trees or placates bad children with icy treats isn't smiling.

He's shaking with rage.

"Where are they?" Mumen Rider demands. _"Where are they?"_

Moritsu takes a half-step back. Mumen Rider chews up that lost ground in an instant and presses in even closer than before.

"I b-beg your pardon?" Moritsu asks, fist clenched around those keys with enough force to crack the plastic fob. So close, Moritsu can see the man's eyes through his tinted goggles. They're wide and the pupils are dilated. As a science teacher, Moritsu knows that that tends to happen when you're getting ready to haul off and slug someone.

"I was there, Professor Mo-rit-su I-zu-mu," Mumen Rider says slowly, taking care to enunciate every syllable of the man's name. _"I know."_

Moritsu stabs out with his keys like they're knives. Mumen Rider sees them coming and swats the old man's hand away with one smooth motion, sending the attack flying out where it can't do any good. Moritsu stumbles forward and Mumen Rider just steps out of his way.

"I don't want to hurt you!" Mumen Rider says in a tone of voice that convinces Moritsu that nothing could be further from the truth. "But-"

Mumen Rider saw the keys coming because Moritsu telegraphed the move from a kilometer away. But he doesn't even see the _handbag_ whipping around until it's too late, slamming into the side of his skull with enough force to crunch bone. When you hit someone in the head like that? Game over. Freaking _game over._ Odds are that someone's going to call for a hearse next, and it's not going to be Moritsu because he's got to get out of there. He runs for his car and fumbles with the lock for a moment before stopping and looking back behind him.

Mumen Rider's moving.

"Protect the head," Mumen Rider says groggily, forcing himself to his feet again. "It's the most important part of your body! Wear a helmet...!"

With speed born from urgency, Moritsu finally gets his door unlocked and hurls himself inside, forgetting about the books entirely. He's got to get out, and that's the only thing that's on his mind right now. He's got to get away because he's being hunted and there's no way that he can stay.

Unless... unless there is.

Mumen Rider looks up at the sound of an engine roaring to life. Everything still swimming double, the ground seeming to shift and tumble underfoot, he stares at a pair of headlights barreling down on him much, much faster than the speed limit. That's a moving violation right there. It hasn't yet dawned on him that this is less a vehicular crime and more of a homicidal one.

As far as Moritsu knows, Mumen Rider is the only witness to the crime. Blond Bomber was too busy fighting the monster and probably doesn't even know that Mitsubishi Tomoe _exists, _let alone that she's missing. If Mumen Rider were to somehow go away, then nobody would be able to connect him to her. Sure, he'd have to explain why he ran the man over, but he's pretty smart and he has seconds – maybe even minutes! – to think of something. _One problem at a time, Izumu, _he tells himself. _Get rid of this one first, then worry about the next problem!_

For a brief second, the two men meet gazes. Mumen Rider standing – barely – on the pavement, and Moritsu wet-eyed as he plows his 1,400-kilogram killing machine straight at him. For both men, it seems to last for so much longer. For Moritsu, it's because the suspense is killing him and he can't rest until he knows that he did his job and got it over with. For Mumen Rider, it's because he's telling his legs to move and they're taking an awfully long time to respond. They're racing to complete their actions first and, unfortunately for Moritsu, Mumen Rider's better at races.

He doesn't even have centimeters to spare. For a brief moment, Mumen Rider's left foot and the front fender occupy the same space. Both men scream as the car races by. Mumen Rider because, after all of that punishment he's taken, this is finally the one that breaks something in his foot. Moritsu because he had one shot at this, _one shot_, and he knows that he's blown it. He sees Mumen Rider scrambling away in his rear-view mirror.

Reality – or, at least, a small part of it – sinks in. He can't exactly back up and try again. It'll take him longer to circle back around than it will for Mumen Rider to dodge through the narrow confines of the parking lot or, worse, make it inside. If he gets out of his car to finish the game on foot... well, no. There's no winning that game. It's not like he's got a proper weapon, and he's lost the element of surprise. On an even playing field, Mumen Rider is a beast and will just slaughter him. In the debate between fight and flight, flight wins handily.

**^V^V^V^**

Mumen Rider roars with pain. He isn't even back on his feet yet but sweet merciful gods, his foot burns like a thousand hot irons. Stars swim through his vision and every fiber of his being tells him to stay down. His soul forces him to plant that broken foot like a flag and stand on it, damn the consequences.

"Get back here!" Mumen Rider shouts, stumbling after the car as it roars into the street, cutting off a sedan and nearly running over two students in red uniforms. Mumen Rider curses under his breath and mounts up on his bicycle, playing over the odds in his head. The man's got a head start and, while Mumen Rider's good at races, this opponent's cheating and now he's got a handicap. All that Moritsu has to do is escape line of sight and make one turn, and Mumen Rider will never find him again. He had one chance, and he blew it!

He pedals hard, sweat dripping from his forehead and fogging up his goggles. He sucks down wet air and strains against the highest gear. After everything he's been through, after so long without sleeping, his knees and legs are killing him and his muscles are all burning and his bones are creaking and his head hasn't felt right since yesterday and his foot feels like someone's sawing it off. And as the car pulls further away? Well... that does something unkind to his heart, too.

"Don't let him get away!" Mumen Rider shouts ineffectually, hoping against hope that some quirk of fate will answer him. Maybe there's an off-duty hero nearby and they'll come to the rescue. Maybe the man will pop a tire or overheat his engine. Maybe Moritsu will even get gridlocked or something, Mumen Rider doesn't know!

It finally happens. Three blocks and eight near-death experiences later, Mumen Rider rounds a corner and has no idea where to go next. The engine's roaring and he can hear it, but he knows what it sounds like when a car's in the distance and pulling away, shrinking into lower-frequency noises until there's not much point talking about it anymore. That's the Doppler Effect. He keeps going, losing heart, but he keeps going because he can't live with himself if he doesn't pursue this human monster to the best of his ability. He'll never be able to sleep again if he faces the families of his victims and tells them that he gave up because he lost hope.

_Sckreeaech!_

He brakes hard, not even knowing why at first. Something catches his eye and something deep within him screams at him to stop.

"What the...?" Mumen Rider looks around himself. Seeing nothing, he retraces his path and heads back the way he came. It seems like minutes during which the car's engine grows fainter, but he knows that it's really just seconds. He heads back to a little alleyway between two rows of danchi and stares dumbly into the distance.

Cherry blossoms.

The alley's filled with them, blowing on a cool breeze that has no right existing this far past springtime. Pink-white petals litter the grimy concrete so thickly that you can hardly see the ground, and that smell... oh, it's like the kiss of the natural world so deep in the middle of this artificial jungle of human toil. And for a moment? For a moment, he sees something pink and silver at the end of that alley, passing like the woman strolling through her garden in that woodprint hanging in the Mitsubishi family's _washitsu_.

"You haven't led me astray so far!" Mumen Rider shouts, unsure if I can hear him. He rears his bike around and powers down through the shower of pink and pain.

**^V^V^V^**

One second, there's a monster in front of him.

The next, it's exiting the atmosphere in about sixteen distinct pieces.

No... no, that's not quite right. The pieces move so fast that friction literally vaporizes them after a few miles amidst a roar like the ancient king of the terror lizards. And Genos, the Demon Cyborg, catches every last detail with his enhanced vision. His cybernetic eyes slant down to his balled fist before long and his face tightens into an expression not entirely unlike annoyance.

"It looked so intimidating," he muses. "I expected that this beast would require more than ten percent of my strength. Is this how Master feels at the end of every battle?"

He looks around himself. Monsters lay battered and broken all about and their insides paint the trees in every direction. It's a gory canvas, but it's the best that he can do.

"No wonder his eyes are so hollow," he says. "To have such power, and to let it all go to waste on such undeserving tripe... so much _overkill..._ it's so unsatisfying... but maybe I can make up for it with you."

His eyes whir and click. Golden lenses like vicious stars against the black gulf of night shift. He tilts his head a little to peer over his shoulder.

"Kaff..." the only monster left with a body that has any discernible shape sputters. It might've once had a bovine outline, but all that's left is shattered bone and horn, scorched flesh, and a lot of misery. "Bleckathh... brk! Kaaaaagh..."

_Intimidation, _Genos thinks. _Master Saitama never bothers with it, but that's because no-one can so effortlessly accomplish what he does. King and Hellish Blizzard make extensive use of it. Bang encouraged me to pursue it because he can always see potential. I must admit, I never really appreciated its use until now._

"You're dying and nothing can stop that now," Genos says, turning his back on the grim tableau before him. It works better if he appears disinterested in it. It's the same reason for slowly walking away from an explosion: you have to appear so unfazed by extreme carnage that you don't even consider it worth your time while it utterly absorbs your onlookers.

"Urkh...!" the broken thing groans. It tries to rise to its hooves. It tries to run. Genos doesn't let it. He crosses the distance so fast that he hardly seems to have moved at all, and slams a metal foot down upon the beast's torso.

"But it's within your power to end it quickly," Genos says. He unfurls his fist into an open hand. And then his palm unfurls into the muzzle of a barrel. And then his _arm _unfurls into a nightmarish melding of exhaust ports and energy condensers and targeting apparatuses and mass accelerators and dynamos and turbines. "Tell me where your master is. Otherwise, _I take my time and enjoy this._"

The air shimmers around them as the heat builds into a red light within the barrel. Pellucid sparks dance around the cannon that was once an arm, the metal demon that was once a man. Yet somehow the man's emotionless eyes shine brighter and more hatefully than the glowing muzzle of his weapon.

"Bak... Baka..."

The eyes narrow.

"Baka... rai... Bakarai Zed... Zed... Central Trust... and B-Baaaa... _Banking..._"

Genos tilts his head. The words run through a dozen search engines and mapping programs. In less time than it takes to say the name, he knows everything there is to know about Bakarai Zed Centr-

"Money," Genos says, sounding every bit as disappointed with the conclusion as his teacher does with everything. "I expected something less pitiful. Less... mundane."

He presses the muzzle against the creature's head much harder than he has to.

"But I'll keep my word. You'll be dead before you know it."

And just like that, half a hectare of forest disappears in a roar of technological hellfire.

**^V^V^V^**

Moritsu's sweating.

Oh, it's not because of the hellish heat outside. In one frantic moment, he cranked the AC up as high as it could go and he's been driving so long that it's a good ten degrees cooler than when he started, but that does nothing to combat the fearsome heat he's radiating. His dress shirt's positively drenched and he has to wipe his eyes every now and then as salty water stings his eyes. Sweat or tears, he doesn't know. It could be either, it could be both. He just knows that things can only get worse.

Cameras. They installed those _years_ ago. The campus is completely covered with cameras. They're pointed not only at the inside the building, but its outsides. The whole incident in the parking lot? All of it was on camera. The more he thinks about it, the deeper in he realizes he's dug his grave. They have him on film, lashing out at Mumen Rider and then trying to run him over. There's no good way to spin this.

"I have to get out of the city," he fretfully tells himself as he sits at a red light. He honks his horn, trying to get the driver in front of him to move despite it. He obstinately sits still and Moritsu screams despite himself. He's coming undone and he knows that it won't do any good, but he can't stop. He's full of nervous energy and he's got no other avenue for it than to squirm in his seat and yell and cry like some caged animal. "Damn it! I can't believe it! _Damn it!_ I have to get out! I have to get out and you're not moving! Move, move you sick, sadistic son of a...!"

Then it hits him.

Mumen Rider is chasing him. The hero didn't tell anybody what he found or what Moritsu tried doing. It's not like someone's actually sitting around watching footage in real time. Nobody has any reason to check the security footage. And... yeah, that could work. The attack must've lasted no more than a minute. It was over so fast that there's no possible way that anybody could've seen it.

He's in a car. Mumen Rider's on a bicycle. There's no way that the younger man can beat him back to the starting point. He just has to return to school, find some excuse to get into the security room, and figure out how to erase the footage. It can't be that difficult. He just has to-

Slowly, serenely, a pink flower floats past the windshield on a cool and gentle wind that he can't see, hear, or feel. The color's pastel, so it's not as magnetic as that strident red he wears, but the incongruity of it against the shimmering greys and browns just captivates him. For a moment – just a moment, but a powerful moment nonetheless – Moritsu stares at that flower like it's the most important thing in the world. And then, like so many things – like a tick of the clock or water over a fall – it's gone forever.

_**Wunkt!**_

Moritsu nearly jumps out of his skin from surprise. He looks out the door in pale horror as about seventy kilos of justice-dispensing bicyclist bounces off the passenger door of his car amidst a spray of pink petals. The man falls to the ground in a heap, but his ire's raised and he's back on his feet in a flash and he's brandishing a tire iron like a club.

"It's over, Moritsu!" Mumen Rider shouts. Somehow, Moritsu can hear him over the pounding of his own heart and the rush of blood storming through his temples. "The police know everything!"

_Lies, _he tells himself because he has to if he's going to stay sane. _Lies, lies, lies!_

Mumen Rider smashes the window in a single stroke, sending a shower of glass and blossoms inward like debris ahead of an explosion. He doesn't have time to exploit his opening: Moritsu guns it, jerking the wheel hard and rushing into oncoming traffic. He powers through the red light, clips the front fender of a hastily-braking truck that he cuts off, and races through the streets like a madman. He goes so fast that he's sure that there's no way that Mumen Rider can catch up. He takes little comfort from this thought. He thought that once, and look at what happened! He's got no idea how Mumen Rider crossed the distance so fast or even found him amongst so many cars, but he did it anyways!

The dashboard gives him some alarming figures. The engine's getting hot and it's spending more time in the red zone of the tachometer than the white. It's making these odd clicking noises and he smells something funny in the cabin. It's almost like... tuna fish? Yeah, tuna fish. That's the smell that radiator fluid makes when it _boils_. Between the punishment that he's putting the car through and the just absolutely miserable, stifling, scathing day, he's pushing the car to its limits.

And somehow Mumen Rider is _gaining on him_.

"_Justice Drafting!"_ Moritsu hears the man screaming. Or he imagines that he hears him screaming. Or he misunderstands what he said or maybe this is all just a nightmare. The man's forced himself into Moritsu's nerves and won't stop thrashing them.

"What are you?!" he screams, not knowing if a human can hear it but even less sure of Mumen Rider's humanity. If so much steel and glass can't survive the race, how can a man?! The man is a beast. The man is a _monster!_ He's a heat-seeking missile and attack dog all at once and he just w-i-l-l. N-o-t. S—T—O—P—!—!

Moritsu spends most of his time on the road, but not all of it. When he faces too much traffic, when he sees a red light, or he just panics a little he does unkind things to his undercarriage and swerves onto the sidewalk. Nobody wants to be out in this temperature and humidity, but so many brave the heat that he nearly kills dozens. They jump out of the madman's way, take shelter behind parked cars, dive behind stoops... anything to escape his murderous wheels.

_And Mumen Rider won't disappear from his rear-view mirrors._

That fact robs him of sense and decency. He swerves back and forth between the street and the sidewalk more and more. He hears a pop as he grinds on the curb, feels the shredding of rubber giving way and one of his wheels driving down on the rim but he keeps going. _I'm still in control_, he tells himself despite how untenable the position becomes. _I'm still in control! I can make this work! I'm the master of my own destiny and I can't be stopped!_

Bold words, those. Against another human, they might have some chance of success. But you can't argue with reality. The truth is... well, it simply _is,_ and Moritsu can't win an argument about controlling his destiny when, unlike the dozens of people who obligingly jump out of the way, a mailbox stands fast against him. He impacts it with enough force to pry it free from its mounting, but not before it rips off a good tire and half of the fiberglass skin on the passenger side of his vehicle.

With life and death on the line, time slows. A brain, stretched to the limit, tries to take in every single piece of information that it possibly can in hopes that it can find some out from a situation. But when you're helpless inside of nearly a ton and a half... scratch that, now just over a ton of hurtling, twisted metal? It's just torturous as a terrible moment goes on and on and you're left to absorb everything like an insult.

The car swirls around. It rolls and yaws. It careens sideways and backwards. Glass shatters, metal bends and groans. The vehicle smashes through stairways, street signs, mailboxes, food stalls... it becomes an unguided missile tearing a path of destruction through the sidewalk and across an intersection and Moritsu's along for the whole blasted ride until it slams to a halt against the brick façade of a bank. Masonry and glass collapse onto what's left of the hood and somehow I won't let him die.

For a while – how long? Minutes, hours, probably seconds – the world's just this stabbing pain and shrieking sound. Moritsu opens his eyes but everything's just this blur. His arms move of their own free will, struggling against something soft and white and he's not sure what it is but he doesn't even know if he's alive.

"No!" someone shouts. It doesn't really pull Moritsu out of his daze, but it gives him something to focus on. Something other than the pain and shock. "No, no, no! Not again! Please, someone...!"

_Oh, gods, _Moritsu thinks. He actually feels guilty for a moment. And, with it, fearful. _Did I kill someone? No, I can't have. Please don't throw me away for such a stupid murder. After all this..._

"Not my cabbages!" the man screams. "This place is worse than Ba Singh Se!"

_What?_

He can't see what that's about. His vision's terrible right now and he's pretty sure that he didn't come out of the crash entirely intact, but he's alive and the more he focuses on the absurdity of that comment, the more aware of his surroundings he becomes. The whiteness around him... airbags. They didn't deploy when he hit the mailbox, but they did before he hit the bank at least. Better late than never. He coughs and gags, trying to fight his way through the pillowy prison and making little headway until someone notices his plight.

"There's someone in there!" a woman shouts and Moritsu has no idea who or where she is other than generally outside. Then there's this general commotion and he can kind of see people looking in through the broken windows, trying to make an opening and get in to help him. He realizes that he can use this to his advantage.

"I... I lost control..." he says weakly. It's really not much of an act: he wants to sound pitiful, and he really is. Too much, even. He tries adding some strength and vigor – just a little will do – but can't muster much. That crash took a lot out of him. "The b-brakes... failed..."

"Shut up 'til we get you out!" someone shouts. "Does anyone have a knife?"

There are hands all around him. They press in from all directions, beating aside the airbags and fumbling with his seatbelt. Sleeves and skin are slashed on broken glass but they persist because it's what humans do when one of their own is in trouble. The buckle won't release, so someone slides in a box cutter and starts sawing away the belt. Someone else pops the bags and rips them out and, in less than a minute, they've got Moritsu out of his iron coffin.

_I don't have a minute, _he thinks, but everything's kind of floaty right now. _I don't... why don't I...?_

"You're lucky to be alive!" someone says, running an arm over his shoulder and supporting his weight. "What happened?"

"Brakes justkinda... stopped-dworkinnng?" His words slur together. That's probably not good. But he keeps working it, trusting that things will start working again in their own time. "Triiiied n-nottoh-hit..."

"Just stop talking, buddy," another man says. Amongst the strewn vegetables and bricks and flowers, in the heat and wet of a horrid day, Moritsu becomes aware of the vast crowd of people around him. Faces of every age and stripe surround him, all of them worried, all of them concerned. All of them merge into one peach-toned sea of worrying. None of them angry: none of them know what he did. None of them know what he's running from.

Just that one demon with a green warhelm, glaring at him like...

...

_Oh, _Moritsu thinks as he regains a little more of his senses but loses what's left of his mind. _Oh, shit._

He's been knocked around and his senses have taken their leave, but his body's unharmed. Mumen Rider's stumbling, favoring his right foot. Something must've happened to it and Moritsu has no idea that he's the cause, but he sees his one last chance to escape and he tries to take it. He pushes at the man supporting him and almost says something like, "Let me go!" but it comes out as so much blubbering.

"Don't worry, I'm not letting you fall!" the man says. For all of Moritsu's desperate strength, he's got the coordination of preschoolers at a dance recital and he can't make his actions look like anything but shellshocked distress. The man's grip is too tight and focused and it's over after that.

"I have had a _day _because of you!" Mumen Rider growls, finally forcing his way through the crowd. It happens so quickly that nobody can stop him despite that painful way that he hobbles forward almost on one foot. He wrenches Moritsu out of the concerned citizen's grasp despite his pain and takes a little bit too much pleasure slamming him against the hood of his wrecked vehicle, pressing his helmet into Moritsu's forehead with enough force to bring their noses together. Moritsu looks deep into Mumen Rider's bloodshot eyes and swears that he can see his own death reflected back at him.

"H-hey!" A man says, putting his hand on Mumen Rider's shoulder. He tries to pull him away, telling him, "Leave him alone! He just survived a car accident!"

Mumen Rider doesn't enjoy it but he doesn't see an alternative. He pushes the man and yells, "This man is a _wanted criminal! He kidnaps children!_"

Gasps. Confused glances. Shocked murmurs. It comes out of the blue so quickly that once again, nobody can say or do anything against it. If your ordinary riled-up bicycle enthusiast started slamming a man around and calling him a criminal after barely surviving a crash, you can bet that people would be intervening right around now. But then again, this isMumen Rider...

"P-please," Moritsu says, raising his hands. If he acts pathetic enough, maybe someone in the crowd will come to his aid. "Y-you mmmmm-mus-t musthavem-me confused wAAARGH!"

That scream accompanies Mumen Rider ripping off the gauze pad, which stings a lot more than you'd expect. Moritsu's hand flies up to cover it but Mumen Rider grabs his wrist and forces it down, taking a good, long look at his cheek. He finds two things there, only one of which he was expecting: a gash and a mole.

"When did you do it?" Mumen Rider asks. "Did you do that after you handed Tomoe off to your friends? Did you do that to sell the illusion that you were actually a _victim_ yesterday?"

Moritsu's groaning too much to answer. That doesn't stop Mumen Rider, who's doing things that he never thought he would when he started the fight against evil all of those years ago.

"Because you didn't have a scar on your face yesterday," he continues. "_You didn't have a scratch!_ But that mole? That mole I remember now. I had to look at the staff lineup in a yearbook to remember it, but once I had _that_, I found you in seconds. That mole was the only distinguishing trait that you had, and I'd have never remembered you if we met again with that gauze pad on you. But now, Moritsu Izumu? I know you. I know everything about you. _And so do the police._"

"Y-you're lying," Moritsu says defiantly. "You're lying...!"

"I don't lie about anything," Mumen Rider says. Moritsu realizes that the man's not blinking. Throughout this whole ordeal, he hasn't seen Mumen Rider blink a single time. It takes a special kind of man to lie his ass off and not break eye contact, and it takes an entirely other kind of man to look you dead in the face and tell you a hard truth. "I don't want to hurt you, Moritsu. I really don't. But I need to know where they are. Time's running out. Please, don't make this harder than it has to be. Tell me where you've taken them."

Something about Mumen Rider's phrasing strikes Moritsu the wrong way, but he doesn't know exactly what it is. Just... the man's being open in ways that Moritsu can't even understand and maybe it's the aftermath of the crash, but he's saying something that he shouldn't know and Moritsu can't begin to imagine _what that is._

"Please," Mumen Rider says a little softer. "Let me help them."

Moritsu opens his mouth. He almost says it. He wants to say it. The tension, the anxiety, the fear... he just wants it to end. It's not for lack of trying that he doesn't say it. He honestly tries.

But then Bakarai Zed Central Trust and Banking building explodes.

**^V^V^V^**

**Author Notes**

_(This chapter was originally posted on Sunday, May 26th, 2019)_

_(This chapter was substantially edited and reposted on Friday, September 21st, 2019)_

I must apologize for the delay in submitting this chapter. Shortly before the last one went up, I started a new job and my free time's been mostly spent staying off my feet and staring at walls. I made the promised 2-week deadline, but most of my attention's been spent not staring at the computer.

This chapter was going to go on for a lot longer. But... well, as I went further beyond this point, I realized that things were going on awfully long. This seemed like the natural point to break the chapter in two, if for no other reason than what follows immediately after makes more sense at the beginning of an episode rather than after a simple line break. It still seems kind of sudden, so I had to add a little foreshadowing. The bit with Genos interrogating the bull-monster went in to set up the bank being the scene of some really serious buffoonery, and a prelude to what's going to happen next time.

I guess that the last thing that I'll say is that I only regret the "baka" pun a little. Generally, I try to avoid using gratuitous foreign words if I can help it. After all, if a Japanese word has a perfectly good English translation, there's no reason to keep it untranslated: I'm writing in English, so I might as well commit. I'm not going to throw in random Japanese words as window dressing to convince you that, yes, this is supposed to be inspired by something Japanese. I'm going to do it by using words and concepts have no adequate translation, like _danchi _or _daitou/katana _or _okonomiyaki, _and use them in the proper context. I think that having two people kneeling in a _washitsu _with one person being distracted by a _miko _figurine is going to do a better job of it than having the girl calling the man "_Mumen-sempai!" _and commenting that he is "_So kawaii, desu!"_ And if someone's going to call someone an idiot, then I'm going to say that he called him an idiot rather than a _baka._

But if I'm going to go for a joke, then I'm going to have him pause after the first two syllables of _Bakarai _because it's a proper noun and you don't translate that.

After all, I'm not localizing _One Piece._

**^V^V^V^**

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Nothing ever moves in a straight line.

It may look like it at first, but that's because it's straight relative to you. Everything's moving relative to everything else and, when you take that into account, your straight line's a compound curve because everything's moving in circles relative to something else that's in turn moving in circles to something else as well. Or, ellipses, if you want to be technical, because perfect circles don't exist outside of geometry as points a fixed distance from a central point.

These are the kinds of things that you need to factor in when calculating orbital mechanics. Nothing in space moves the way that you think it should because you're too used to how they move on Earth. In an airless void where friction effectively ceases to exist, the best way to move up is to move sideways really fast, and you have to coordinate clocks and signals to account for the resultant special relativity...

Child's play.

Bofoi likes to dial back the AI for these kinds of things. He lets the converted Intercontinental Ballistic Missile blast out of the atmosphere on a plume of flame guided by his numbers. Launch windows, rocket stage separations, fuel expenditures, reaction mass... crunched on a slide rule.

Why a slide rule? Because a little rocket science gives him the mental exercise he needs for the day now that Sudoku doesn't do it for him anymore, and he needs the challenge. He locked it into the navigation computer and, since hitting the little red button that set it to launch, now has as little control over events as a child watching their model rocket go up. Success and failure of the mission depend entirely on some numbers that he jotted down on graph paper in a fit of idle boredom a few hours ago.

He's not much more energetic as he stares at his screen, watching the numbers roll in. He's got about twenty cameras mounted on various parts of the service capsule, but he's really interested in the raw telemetry and it's just some run-of-the-mill digits. Nothing really excites him anymore. Nothing really invigorates him. Especially not on a routine mission like this. He's not even doing this to collect data: he's just servicing a satellite.

Yesterday, while taking a call from someone in the Association – and he can't be bothered to remember who; they're all just Social Security Numbers to him – one of his twenty geosynchronous surveillance satellites went offline. This one was pointed at City Z, where an awful lot of interesting things have been happening lately. Ground-based observation indicated that the device is still there, but its transmitter is offline. He just has to patch it up and send it on its way. It's not even that important, but it gives him an excuse to skip another Hero Association teleconference. Something about aliens and monsters and improving humanity's defenses against both, maybe, hell if he knows. It's just so much white noise and he phones his work in between projects anyways.

A new window pops up on his screen. The service capsule's firing its retro thrusters. Radar picks up the satellite and starts marking distance to the target. A diagram compares the satellite's orbit to his rocket's trajectory, counts off the time to achieving a matched orbit, annnnnnd... there.

Flawless. As though there was any doubt!

The capsule magnetically docks with the satellite and the capsule opens like a flower, ejecting a three-eyed drone into the near-vacuum of high-Earth orbit. Finally, his little challenge completed, he allows himself to watch the video feed as it rolls. Finally, he has something to _do._ Something to _observe._

"Twinkling, twinkling, little star," Bofoi murmurs under his breath. "How I wonder how you are..."

The Metal Knight Recon Drone floats closer with its diminutive verniers, rotating and twisting to give Bofoi a solid view of the satellite's hull. He only gives the thing minimal instructions: in space, there's a tiny but significant lag in the feed, and a slightly longer one before he sees any command implemented. It's the tyranny of the universe's speed limit: nothing moves faster than light, and he's operating from far-enough away that a signal traveling a hair under 300,000 kilometers a second is just slow-enough to inconvenience him. The drone's got just enough AI to follow instructions. Bofoi doesn't need to manually control every movement of the thing's hands to wipe its own tailpipe, but he does need to give it permission.

"There you are," Bofoi says, zooming in on a jagged little piece of metal that was once a hardpoint. There _should _be a radio dish there, but Bofoi can't see any sign of it. Judging by the mangled shape of the struts, it looks like something hit it. _Hard._ "A meteor? No... the angle's wrong. It had to have come from the planet. Did someone shoot you from the ground, my pet?"

He shakes his head. It's not like the orbiting machine can hear him, can it? He gives the wireless command and the drone starts to head back for the capsule. There's a spare transceiver inside and he just has to...

"_What?_" he blurts. His heart rate actually spikes as something flashes on screen that defies explanation. It leaves the drone's field of view too fast for his liking and he has to scramble to abort the action. "Go back, go back, go back...!"

There's a delay of only a few fractions of a second that seem to last forever. The drone keeps moving until it receives and implements Bofoi's orders, and then there's the delay for him to receive the feed. The telemetry's all but forgotten: his eyes are solely on the picture now. And the picture's giving him a dark smear on the hull of the satellite.

"Zoom in on grid D-4," he says. He growls and types in the command, finding that voice-to-text is too slow and imprecise for him. And there it is: a long, black line running across the cowling beside the hardpoint. It's regular, forming some kind of pattern...

"Enhance image," the genius scientist types in more specific terms. There's an agonizingly long delay as the computers run the images through twenty filters and sharpen the details. It's almost too much to bear. "Come on, come on..."

The picture comes in. Bofoi blinks. He removes his glasses, cleans the lenses, and replaces them on his face. He blinks again. Then he rubs his eyes and stares at the screen for a bit longer, studying the impression on the hull of his 30-billion yen spy satellite.

He then decides that everything that he knows about life is wrong, pops open a cold one, and gets drunk for the first time in almost thirty years.

There are bicycle tire marks on his satellite.


	6. Chapter 6

The following is a non-profit fan-based story and the author is unaffiliated with ONE, Shueisha, or Viz Media, who own the rights to _One-Punch Man_. Please support the official releases.

**^V^V^V^**

**:: HUMAN EVIL ::**

**by**

**Seraph of Winters Past**

**^V^V^V^**

**Chapter Six**

"**While Gods Struggle Overhead"**

He should be dead.

The fact that he isn't is really surprising. Moritsu can't say that he's upset about it, but he's terribly confused once the fact sinks in. It leaves him wanting to know a little more. Prone, his face resting against a brick and covered in all sorts of lovely cuts and bruises, the first thing that he notices is the cool softness in his hand. Curious, he turns his wrist over and examines his find more closely. He finds only a fresh, pink-white flower.

_Prunus serrulata, _his scientific mind tells him as he stares at the delicate little thing. _Also known as the Hill Cherry, it produces small and inedible fruits unlike the less decorative western counterparts from which are grown for food. Sentimental minds have connected the short life of its flowers to concepts of ephemerality and mortality as it pertains to humans. Soldiers in the War wrote poems about them as they sacrificed their lives in vainglory._

A moment of idle contemplation passes.

_Why am I holding the world's most overrated flower?_

He turns his mind to more important things. Namely, what just happened, why is he alive, and where is he now? He can piece together the answers to the first two from what he can surmise about the third. The answer there is that he's in exactly the same place that he was before, but nothing's the same about it.

For starters, the car's gone. I mean... it's not _gone _gone because it's sitting right over there, but it's buried under a pile of bricks so, for all intents and purposes, it's gone. So are at least a couple of the people who'd been standing around. There's no possible way that they escaped the building's collapse. How can he know that? Well, the arms protruding from the pile of bricks and stones is a pretty good clue.

For a moment, his eyes lock on those of a man with grey hair and pale eyes. His face is about the only thing visible. The rest of him... _Blast_, Moritsu hopes that there's a rest of him... is trapped within the rubble. His eyes, still wet, stare out at the teacher in eternal consideration of questions that he has no answer for: _Why you? Why you and not me? Why do you deserve to live?_

Moritsu has to look away. He can't answer the questions, and he feels like anything he says would be an insult. He regrets it immediately: his eyes are drawn by a splash of red on a nearby building. A little schoolgirl in a red blazer, like the ones that many of his students wear, stares out from a flyer.

_Have you seen me? My name is Yamaha Miharu, and I was last seen walking home from City Z Nishi East Elementary School. If you have any information about where I am, please call my parents at..._

It's not Tomoe. Miharu isn't even in the same class as her. But it doesn't matter. The poster just makes him sick, and he'd lose the contents of his stomach from guilt if he hadn't done that sometime while he was unconscious.

"Uch..." someone says. Someone who's also had a really terrible day and sounds like it. "Come on, Miss. You can do it...!"

Moritsu looks aside, and there he is. Of _course _there he is. Of all of the people who'd live, Mumen Rider had to be one of them. Why not make his life difficult while the gods, the Buddha, or whoever guides the hand of fate is at it?!

Stark against the orange light of an aging day, chalky and dust-covered, bleeding from a dozen places, he flings away shattered masonry and excavates a woman from the wreck and ruin of the building front that must've come down like a rockslide. She moans, whimpers, and cries as he pulls her free and carries her down the slope. The same slope that he's lying beside, actually.

He can't help it. He shouldn't be moving, but his head lolls sideways and he follows Mumen Rider's movements. This brings his attention to the row of battered, ruined people lying beside him on the pavement. Some are moaning. Some aren't. The ones that aren't alarm him more. That would mean that they're unconscious or... well, he guesses that he's no stranger to death anymore, is he? Especially with all of that seedy stuff he's been up to. It dawns on him that Mumen Rider must've pulled him from the collapse like he did the woman. Like he did the line of people three, four, five, s... however many people long. Considering everything that's happened so far, Moritsu can only think of three reasons why Mumen Rider would do such a thing.

**Reason One:** Mumen Rider needs to know what he did with Mitsubishi Tomoe. Presently, Moritsu Izumu is worth more to him alive than dead.

**Reason Two: **Mumen Rider is actually pretty good at lying and, when this is over, he's going to need someone to beat the tar out of to make himself feel better.

**Reason Three:** Mumen Rider is Mumen Rider.

His eyes track Mumen Rider's path. And he's... running away? No, that's ludicrous. He can't even run, judging by that limp. He's just going for his bike. He rips out a white plastic pack with a red cross on it and starts forcing sterile gauze patches and rolls of bandages to whoever's still vertical. Which isn't many, but it's more than Moritsu expects. A handful of battered but ambulatory individuals assail their fellow downed citizens with medical aid under Mumen Rider's sharp and practiced guidance, beating them down with his most underrated and mighty power: an almost psychic influence forcing others around him to do good, to do better, and to do their best.

"An ambulance will be here in a few minutes!" Moritsu hears the young hero tell some old man louder than he probably should. It's not until he notices the blood trickling from the man's ear that he realizes that he's probably mostly deaf now. "Just do your best! Just do your best, alright? Just do your best!""

_The world would be better if everyone was like you, _Moritsu tells himself. _Unfortunately, all that I've got is me._

And cognizant of himself, Moritsu considers his situation. He's been left unattended on the blacktop – obviously okay with minimal assistance – while the others get the help that they need. That's the first rule of triage: make sure that the patient will live, then move on to the next one. His life secure, he's been all-but forgotten. This realization has an altogether unexpected effect on him..

_I can still get away! _ The thought lights up his mind like a beacon of hope in stormy seas. _He's not looking my way!_

He balls his hands into fists, crushing the forgotten flower between straining and filthy fingers. Unaware, he smashes it against the pavement as he pushes himself up to his feet. Still forgotten himself, still not on Mumen Rider's radar, he first stumbles and then trots away from the bank, away from the Cyclist For Justice, and away from the danger.

Oh.

Oh, Moritsu Izumu.

You fool.

You utter, ignorant fool!

Cherish lives that end too quickly because they're all that you get. You were given that flower as a friendly invitation to contemplate its meaning, much as vainglorious men once did, but that same flower can also serve as a warning to those who reject the message. You small and petty man: you don't lightly destroy the blooms of an orchard. You don't lightly cast away a second chance.

Not from me.

Not from the one who prunes this field that you call a home of the weeds that threaten the harvest.

Moritsu doesn't get very far, and not for the reason that you expect. I don't swoop down and strike him where he stands, no. I don't even really do much. He's just made our meeting inevitable and imminent, so there's not much left for me to do but assume my place on the hard concrete beneath five stories of steel girders and winched scaffolding. Nothing to do but wait for him to fall into my arms. The bull will start him on the path.

It's a good six meters tall, it's standing in the open face of the bank, and Moritsu has no idea how it's not the first thing that he noticed upon waking up. In fact, he doesn't know how anybody hasn't noticed it. But as he moves away from the wreckage, as he pulls away from the protection of the crowd, as he stands in sunlight where others dwell in the shade? Now the bull sees _him_.

"_**GRUNMPH?**_" the beast – a Plains Bison in particular – demands, taking an exploratory step out from the darkness of the eviscerated building. Now the light catches it, illuminating a metallic coat made entirely of...

...

Golf clubs.

Nine irons, in particular.

The sunlight plays off of the heads of hundreds... no, _thousands _of golf clubs, all poking out from the gargantuan buffalo's skin like the quills of a porcupine. They ringle and rattle against each other like a symphony of tinny bells, making this awful clattering sound as it pulls itself into plain view of everyone unfortunate enough to remain in the vicinity of the bank. Its horns stand a full two meters long and come to vicious points, but the only thing that the hurting criminal can focus on is the forest of golf clubs taking the place of a pelt.

_Tink! Tink-tink-tink tnnnk crash tink crk! Tink! Tink crk tink-tink-crakl tink!_

Moritsu looks down. Ice cubes skitter-scatter down the slope towards him, accumulating at his feet by the bucket-full. Moritsu looks up. They're falling from the buffalo's nostrils amidst a haze of frosty air. And for all that, there's something hot and violent in its eyes that glow like embers.

"What the f-"

It screams and brays, filling the air with one of the loudest sounds – and definitely most horrifying one – that Moritsu's ever heard in his many long years. Then it rushes from the shadows and crosses the space between them in a heartbeat – no, a fraction of a heartbeat! – and Moritsu nearly drops dead from fright before the monster can reach him.

Moritsu's just an ordinary man, so he can only reconstruct what happens from his interpretations of the aftermath. One moment, the buffalo's charging down on him with every intention of goring him dead. The next, it's reeling from a blow that neither of them ever saw coming, hurled bodily into the deserted restaurant across the street. Then Moritsu understands that the ringing in his ear is the sound of the impact of whatever it was that hit the bull... well, hit the bull with a sound like an explosion. This is all followed a good quarter-second later by the voice of a young man which probably preceded all of this, but only now catches up to the site of the impact.

"_Rocket Punch!"_

Something plows into the ground hard-enough to shake it, nearly pitching Moritsu from his feet. A strong hand – a large hand, a metal hand – slams home on his shoulder and steadies him with a grip that could crush steel. Moritsu would gasp from pain if he wasn't still struggling to understand what just happened and his brain wasn't falling so far behind on interpreting the signs that his nerves are sending him.

"The Hero Association has this situation under control." the man says, and Moritsu can't help but notice that he doesn't have any eyes. Well... there are eyes of a kind, but they're glowing disks of amber light. Camera lenses in empty, black sockets. They look all kinds of threatening right now, he's not going to lie. "You and all civilians are to depart this area until the danger passes. This monster is threat level Tiger. Do you understand?"

Moritsu notices that, for a short time, the man only has that one hand gripping him. The other arm's truncated, ending in a metal cable following the bull's path. A moment later, there's this whirring sound of an industrial spool winding back up, drawing in the cable and slapping home the hand against a metal forearm glowing red from the exhaust of a rocket. This, combined with the man's words, tell Moritsu everything that he needs to know.

_Genos, _Moritsu tells himself. _The Demon Cyborg. A hero from Class S. And he doesn't recognize me...?_

Things suddenly start looking very good for Moritsu. He actually starts thinking that he can get away with this. With Mumen Rider distracted and the Class S hero not knowing who he is...!

"Stop him!" Mumen Rider shouts. He's abandoning the lot of broken people to his helpers, struggling with the kickstand of his bicycle, trying to mount up with only one good foot and reach the two before Moritsu can get away because he knows an escape attempt when he sees one. "That man is a kidnapper!"

Genos looks down at Moritsu and his pupils – his lenses, camera apertures, whatever they are! – dilate as they take in more of his details, referencing and cross-referencing them against his databanks and whatever he can pull from the internet. His eyes widen almost imperceptibly and Moritsu curses his ever-changing luck as recognition plays across the young metal man's face.

Genos in a shocked but stern voice says, "You're the one that Master-" but never finishes the sentence. The horn takes Moritsu and especially Genos by surprise because the thing rips through his torso in a shower of pellucid sparks. The bull – and like many things that day, Moritsu has no idea how it got so close, so fast, so quietly – twists its head sideways and flings the impaled cyborg from his horn. The younger man hits the stone facing of a hardware shop with a wet slap and suddenly the teacher's alone with the ice-breath buffalo and the knowledge of his own mortality. These two facts combined are enough to motivate him into a hard run, one which the bull enthusiastically follows.

_The Hand-Monster, _Moritsu thinks to himself in the few short moments allotted him. _Mumen Rider, this big cow, Genos, the cow again! When did my life get so complicated?!_

A short distance away, Genos's head jerks up and he reacquires his surroundings. Motor oil seeps from his mouth all the while. That's a sign that not everything's operating properly, but, unlike most people, a little impalement doesn't exactly slow him down.

...

Well, it does, but not as much as it would an ordinary person. It's more accurate to say that it doesn't stop him. His legs are damaged thanks to the horn tearing a hole clear through the main cable bundle carrying commands to them, but he can walk that off. For a moment – just a moment, but it's a heavy one – he mentally castigates himself for dropping his guard again. The mosquito girl, Carnage Kabuto, the Deep Sea King, the psychic brat... it's becoming repetitive, and now he has to add a giant bull covered in golf clubs to his list of foes who've gotten the drop on him.

"Stop that man!" Mumen Rider shouts as he passes, chasing after the bull without an apparent care in the world. And yet, somehow, he hasn't gotten torn to shreds once despite wading into the fray with nothing more than his bicycle and soft fleshy parts. Genos doesn't know if that's because there's no justice in the world, or because the world throws these kinds of things at him because he can take it.

_Whatever, _Genos thinks as he pushes himself to shaking and unsteady feet. _I'll take it. Atomic batteries to power. Turbines to speed...!_

First he threw his fist at the beast. Now he throws the rest of him. His whole body glows with the power of his nuclear core, shedding heat and electrons from exhaust ports and turning them into thrust. Well over a hundred kilos of metal and vengeance hurl themselves past the bicyclist and into the beast's ribs, knocking the impossible monster from its hooves and slamming it into what remains of the Bakarai Zed bank.

Moritsu forgotten and Mumen Rider pushed from his mind, the cyborg turns all of his thoughts towards ending the beast that damaged his body and, more urgently, his pride. He called his master for help punishing this monster and averting the rage of its owner, but he no longer cares about that: this has become personal, and he's not going to stop until he's standing atop more than twenty tons of broken metal and burnt flesh.

"Rocket Jets!" the Demon Cyborg screams. "Ninety-eight percent power!"

They're not done moving yet. They're not even close to it. They hit the brick and mortar far within the shadowed depths of the building at its strongest and most reinforced part, but a little thing like a solid wall's not going to stop Genos from killing this thing as hard as a thing can be killed.

"Ninety-nine percent! One hundred percent! _One hundred and one percent!_"

He pushes his reactor beyond safe operational limits, past the breaking point, and holds his body together through unyielding rage and determination. Mortal conceits shouldn't do a thing against heat tolerances, tensile strengths, or energy capacity. His body gives every sign of disobedience. His thruster nozzles glow red and soften under the intense heat and wire insulation runs liquid under the electric onslaught upon his insides.

"_One hundred and two!"_ he bellows. _"One hundred and five! One-ten!"_

Somehow, that doesn't seem to mean anything to him right now: he just tells his body to give him more power and damn the consequences, and his body fearfully obeys. And while they're already violating the laws of physics, they figure that there's no point holding back in borrowing against the impossible.

"_One-twenty! One-thirty! One-fifty! __**One-ninety! Two-seventy!**__"_

Impossibility rendered possible, the wall gives out before his engines or the beast's hide. A spiderweb network of cracks and fissures etch out across a load-bearing wall over the course of a microsecond as they're subjected to kinetic energies and torsion that no weapon the size of a man should be able to impart. Then the wall goes, and Genos pushes the colossus through a shower of jagged stones and shorn rebar. The bank can eat the collateral: there are lives and his honor at stake and he could care less about little strips of green paper right about now.

"_**GREEEEAGH!" **_the monster screams like a hurricane, filling the air with ice and mist. That would make it hard to see Ice cubes fling towards Genos like a hailstorm, like an artillery barrage that should flay skin from bone in an instant. But the buffalo's picked a fight with someone who can't be bothered to care about what it tries anymore. The jet-wash of his thrusters and exhaust blasts away the mist without even noticing its presence and the ambient heat of Genos's assault turns ice to steam before it can cross a fraction of the distance.

And Genos isn't done yet.

_You've garbed yourself in titanium and iron, _Genos thinks as hurls the beast down through the foundations and into the vaults below. He diverts power from his rockets and tumbles down after it, sparking as dynamos and tesla coils take up their atomic burdens. _That makes your coat the path of least resistance directly to your wretched heart._

.He connects, and the world seems to disappear in a flash of light and ionized gas.

**^V^V^V^**

As a cybernetic monstrosity beats the living daylights out of an animal made of golf clubs and compromises the stability of the adjacent building, most people have what's considered a human reaction. They beat feet, grab a wounded person, and get the hell out of the area. Mumen Rider's not most people, and the man he's chasing isn't having the most conventional day.

"Come back here!" Mumen Rider shouts, his words mostly lost in the thunder of the battle behind him as Genos blows out another wall. Between that and the haggard sounds of his own breathing, Moritsu can't really hear him. His world's been reduced down to the space ahead of him and a vague understanding of the distance between himself and his opponent. As though in a dream, both shrink ever closer to zero. He's hard-pressed to believe it, but the distance seems to approach faster.

For a brief moment, he thinks that he can actually make it. Him, a man in his fifties, on foot, head still ringing from a car crash and a building collapse. Against a man half his age on a bicycle with a cardiovascular system somewhere in the upper 99th percentile of human athletes. This man thinks that he's pulling it off.

Delusions, I know.

"Got you!" Mumen Rider shouts, grabbing him by the collar of his red jacket and hauling him from his feet. For a few moments, he's suspended in air with the ground rushing below him. "You're going to answer for _hey!"_

It shouldn't be possible, but these have been an impossible two days. Moritsu shifts his weight and his body slips out of his jacket, spilling him to the ground in a crunch of breaking bones. After everything he's been through, _that's _what it takes to fracture calcium phosphate. But he's too hopped up on adrenaline and fear to worry about that right now: after having been so eager to spill his guts, now he's back to trying to figure out how to salvage all of this and put his life back on track. Step One? Get away from Mumen Rider. Step Two? That can wait until he takes care of Step One. That and Step Eighteen – total exoneration and the keys to the city – are the only things that he can focus on right now. And the beginnings of a plan for Step One start forming in his shock-addled mind.

Both of them go down. Moritsu because he's just been dropped. Mumen Rider because he shifted his weight to counter Moritsu's and without that counterweight, all of his mass is off-center. The Cyclist For Justice tumbles and parts ways with his bike as he skids in the opposite direction. The young man screams briefly as all of his weight presses down on a shattered foot, and then there's this moaning, frail sound as pain overwhelms him. Blood from scraped skin mingles with hot tears, and both sizzle on the baking asphalt.

_Go, _Moritsu tells himself as he absorbs the man's suffering. _Go, go, go!_

He's back on his feet before he knows it and he's running back to ground zero, towards the tortured remains of the bank. The building's buckling. It's teetering. It's literally on the verge of toppling over, and Moritsu can see that it's going to slide down into the street any moment now. If he can get ahead of it... it's crazy enough to work. It's hardly the craziest thing that he's seen all day.

"G-get b-b-b-back heeeeeere!" Mumen Rider slurs so quietly that Moritsu can barely hear him over his own racing heart. The younger man stands once, topples back over, and then tries dragging himself back to his feet with the aid of a lamp post. "Not my day... definitely n-not my day...!"

Broken arm limp against his side, Moritsu punches his other hand like a piston, driving hot and gritty air down tortured lungs while Mumen Rider's still trying to get back on his bike. The younger man shouts something, but it sounds like so much gibberish between the staccato cracking of stucco and masonry and brick crunching and giving way. Moritsu's just passing the rocky dome that just might mark the cairn of his car when the whole building tips over and seems to rush down at him like the hammer of some long-gone god of thunder.

_I can make it! _ He tells himself that because he has to. He tells himself that because it keeps his feet pounding asphalt rather than freezing up and accepting his doom on the spot. _I can make this! Please, I can have to make this! I must to have to will I makes this! I willing to thel grackle flrakd ghgrgraaaaaaaaagh!"_

Somewhere along the way, those pleading thoughts turn into voiced gibberish and he's not really focusing on that right now. He knows that debris falls at approximately 9.8 meters per second squared: maybe a little less when you factor in air resistance. Moritsu's got to somehow run faster than that on his bow legs despite the human body being literally incapable of keeping up the acceleration long enough to outpace it. And yet, call it dumb luck or some curious whim of fate wishing to prolong his agony, but he makes it.

The massive bulk of building – so many tens of thousands of kilograms of brick and stone – slam home centimeters behind his gnarled feet, pelting his back with pebbles and stones that nearly but don't quite pitch him flat onto his face. There's this almighty sound like a tsunami of metal behind him, audible for kilometers in all directions, which punches the air from his lungs. And when he can suck down sweet oxygen again?

He laughs.

_Holy crap, _he thinks as tears roll down his cheeks. The crying, the laughing... they don't really represent any particular mood of his right now. They're mostly the result of a mind stretched to the breaking point by tension and his body trying to find some way to vent it all in a single moment of catharsis. _I survived that! How did I survive that?!_

"Haaaaagh huck huck hagh!" he laughs and bawls, not daring to look back lest the confrontation with reality somehow invalidates his survival. "Good luck chasing me through that, Mumen Rider! Not even you can...!"

The petals of a cherry blossom blow past him.

_No, _Moritsu thinks. _No, no, no..._

"_**JUSTICE...!"**_

The world seems to slow down. A nearby honeybee – one of the ones that took refuge under the gutters of the bank until Genos and the bull destroyed its home – passes his face. A honeybee beats its wings approximately 200 times a second and, somehow, Moritsu is conscious of just about every single flap. He swears that, if put to the test, he could see the rippling air under the downbeat. He's just that hyperstimulated right now. It takes him about a quarter of a second to turn his head and look behind him, and he counts 46 individual flaps as he goes. And what he sees behind him makes him wish that he didn't have so long to live.

The dust is still settling. No... it hasn't even started yet. Masonry chunks the size of people are still tumbling down and the pile of debris is still growing as rocks slide down the slope like avalanches in the mountains. Clouds of soot and ash blow out ahead of shockwaves as the building continues its slow-motion disintegration and another floor pancakes the one below it and he can't tell where plumes of dust end and rainclouds begin. Steel girders fly out into the dimming air like matchsticks flicked by giants.

Mumen Rider emerges from a slit between the shockwaves, in the buffers between clouds. Mouth open wide like some ravenous _oni _roaring, he's gulping down a thick and ghastly breath of air in preparation for some shout of exertion: some declaration to fuel the adrenaline driving him on. The rear tire of his bicycle slams home against the flat of an I-beam still falling. He shouldn't have enough left in him to ride it down, but he does. Mumen Rider kicks against the pedals hard, his muscles visibly straining even through the leather legs of his trousers. The far end – Mumen Rider's end – of the girder sinks faster than the close end.

"..._**RAMPING!"**_

A shockwave carries the next cloud of dust between the two of them. For a moment that passes over the course of what seems like an hour, for a moment that lasts almost another hundred beats of the honeybee's wings, Moritsu can't see the man.

And then the cloud passes, and Mumen Rider's launching himself and his bike off of the girder, _gaining altitude, _right as the big hunk of metal slams home against concrete and blacktop and continues its path away from the building. Mumen Rider clears the wreckage. Mumen Rider clears the collapse and touches down. Mumen Rider isn't happy and he's riding down on Moritsu with every hateful expression on his bloody face.

"You're not human!" Moritsu screams. "_You're not human!_"

Mumen Rider's going to overtake him and there's nothing that seems left to stop him now. If he just coasts the rest of the way, he's going to slam into the man from behind. But this chase has gone on long enough and Mumen Rider's a hundred and ten percent _done_ with this crap now. He's going to take the man down, and he doesn't care about being nice about it anymore. He uses his one good leg to punish the pedal with every malicious strain in his body and wrenches both wheels from the ground with one huge effort that comes from his back, shoulders, and arms. He puts himself into a half-spin and aims his wheels square at Moritsu's back, ready to let the bike take him down this time: the old man's already taken a building to the face, so it's not like this is going to do that much worse to him.

"_Justice Crash!_" Mumen Rider shouts.

Well...

He would.

He would if not for Italian rice dishes.

Fate swings both ways today. Centimeters from striking his target, Mumen Rider passes over a manhole cover which erupts from the ground with the force of a bullet. Now, it's a lot bigger than a bullet, so all of that energy's dispersed over a much larger area and doesn't hurt as much on a whole, but it makes a mockery of his planned assault and sends him cartwheeling sideways and away from Moritsu.

Moritsu doesn't have time to question it. He's caught up in the geyser of the crab risotto that propelled the manhole cover up in the first place. All the way down the street, cooked rice and perfectly seasoned crustacean blast manhole covers out of their mountings, sliding over asphalt with so much force that they flow like liquid.

The mushy, slippery mass comes between Moritsu and the ground and he pratfalls, smacking his fundament into the ground as the tide of risotto rises to ankle-height. But he's too pumped on adrenaline to question this turn of events or the ramifications. He's running for his life and this might just be the best thing to happen to him all day because it's separated him from an active threat by the narrowest margin in all of his life. He pushes off, nearly baking his hands in the process, and tries to resume his path. He just keeps trying to go on through ragged breathes and desperation.

That is, of course, until he trips on something hard and unyielding under all of that grain and meat. It starts moving just as he approaches but he's too discombobulated and distracted to really notice it until he's tumbling forward into the world's first belly flop into a street-size Italian entrée.

_Splat!_

"Hey, man, you okay?" the dirty obstacle asks as it kneels up out of the mass of rice. He shakes his head to clear some of the food from himself, revealing a bald face with the world's most notorious lack of expression. He picks some rice from his nose with one hand and pulls Moritsu from the mire with the other. "Bag up what you want, because I know from experience that this stuff goes bad pretty quickly in this heat."

"Ugh what?" Moritsu almost has the presence of mind to ask before recognizing the man's outline. "You're... Caped Baldy, right? The man who stole the kill against the Deep Sea King?"

_Brrt, brrt, brrt..._

It's stupid. It really is. But despite the insanity of what's happening, the only thing that he can think about is who would have the audacity to call him right now.

"Yeah, that's me alright," Saitama says, brushing off some seasoning from his now-brown cape. "Fight some monsters for me so I can take credit for the kill, yadda yadda yadda. Hey, listen: you haven't seen a giant foreign chef with an even gianter chin and his assistant, have you?"

Moritsu has no idea what Saitama's talking about, and he has even less of an idea of how to answer. In fact, he doesn't really know how to respond to much of anything right now. He's too busy looking down at the screen of his phone. He missed the call, but the text message left after might well be the last thing that he can take. It's a message from his school's principal, and it's just a single sentence.

_The police came by asking where you were._

"My life is over," he realizes. "There's no going back... there's no fixing this..."

He doesn't have long to contemplate his next move. Not even Saitama has a moment to ask what he means. The ground cracks open and only Saitama's rock-hard grip stops the man from falling backward into a crevasse splitting the street in half.

"**Where's the lamb sauce?!**" a giant figure in a white chef's jacket screams as he rises from the crevasse. Knee-deep in a hole steadily filling with risotto – a hole that reaches down past the sewer line – the man's head rises higher than the rooftops all around him. Clutched between his massive hands is a thin man with a red vest and a white hat, sporting a scrawny beard and an absolutely flabbergasted expression. "_**WHERE'S THE LAMB SAAAAAAUCE?!**__"_

That poor and hapless man starts to say, "This is not how I thought that I'd die todaaa_aaaAAA__**AAAGH!**_" before the giant twists and rips him in half as though he were some boiled lobster to be cracked open for dinner. Bloody-handed, the giant hurls the two halves away and, in perhaps the most furious tone that Moritsu's ever heard, roars, _"__**It's fooking RAAAAAAW!**__"_

"Oh, hey!" Saitama laughs, pointing up at the man who looks like he has every intention to kill both of them. "There he is!"

Moritsu looks up, half not believing and half not understanding what he's looking at. It's all still a blur to him and not a whole lot's making sense between the surreal situation playing out before him and the message stabbing at his brain from the phone.

_It's over,_ he keeps telling himself. _It's over..._

"You're still here, you old geezer?" Saitama asks. He gives the man a push – just a little one, honest – that sends him reeling away from the murderous chef. Saitama calls after him, "You might wanna get out of here!"

Yeah, yeah... that makes sense. He just... he has to be somewhere else right now. Anywhere. And he has to get there quickly. He's in a hurry to get nowhere and he doesn't know why but he just has to get away. He just has to _get away._

_Fwoosh!_

Genos touches down beside Saitama, carving out a nice crater with his little three-point landing. His legs are still acting funny after the impalement so he needs a hand, and he can't spare the other arm because he's holding a buffalo's curved horn that's almost as tall as he is. He's a smoking wreck, his shirt's been burned away, and half of his face is missing, but that's just what Saitama's come to expect from his apprentice.

"Master," Genos says with utmost seriousness. "That man fleeing on foot is the one that you told me about this morning. Why did you let him go?"

"Oh crap," Saitama says, looking casually over his shoulder as the old man retreats. "That's him? I didn't even know what he looks like."

"We should do something about that," Genos says.

A black-and-brown blur crowned with green rides by them.

"Come back here!" Mumen Rider shouts as Moritsu fades into the distance. "Come back in the name of _Justice!_"

The two men stare at each other for a moment. A lot that doesn't need to be said isn't in that moment.

"Nah, man," Saitama finally tells him. "The Cyclist for Justice has it. We've got bigger shellfish to fry. We'll check on him when we finish here. By the way, what happened to your face?"

"It melted," Genos says with total sincerity. "You told me to constantly test my limits. I not only strained against them to defeat the Billy Madison Buffalo but, in doing so, I broke them. I am not the man that I was this morning. My powers dwarf Doctor Kuseno's wildest expectations. I am now _Super Genos_, Master! I will do you proud!"

"Good on you, man," Saitama says. "Good. On. You."

"**Bloody Hell!**" the giant shouts. Amidst the risotto, knee-deep in the sewer, he raises a butcher knife larger than your average city bus. "**Does no-one know that you're supposed to cook to ORDEEEEEER?! Come here, all of you! We're starting over! Yes, you! You with the melted face, you with the Millennial shaved head routine! I'm going to make this next plate **_**OUT OF YOUR ASS!**__"_

"Right, well, let's get cracking," Saitama says, raising a fist and flexing a few muscles. "You up for this, Mr. Roomba?"

"Yes, Master!" Genos says, glowing red with the unleashed power of his nuclear core. "I will assist you in defeating Giant Chef Gordon Ramsay!"

Saitama sighs in contentment. "There are times when I really do love this job."

**^V^V^V^**

It's dark.

The sun hasn't set behind the horizon, but it _has _set behind the buildings and the oncoming clouds muddle its light. East-to-West streets still get some, but North-to-South avenues only get it in intersections. In those long stretches between, it may as well be night for all that anyone can care.

Moritsu uses his headstart to turn down one of those avenues, hoping against hope that he'll lose Mumen Rider in the process. But he's spent all of his luck by now and his headstart's not as insurmountable as he hoped. He rounds the corner and Mumen Rider's virtually right behind him.

"Moritsu!" Mumen Rider shouts. He's all wobbly and he's only pedaling with one foot but the man's determined like you wouldn't believe. "Give up! You can't run anymore!"

_I can, _Moritsu thinks. _I have to!_

He's got one more chance. One more chance to lose Mumen Rider. It's a construction site, hastily evacuated once the explosions started. They didn't even have time to lock the gates of the chain-link fence surrounding the metal skeleton of the new office building. A chain-link fence with razor wire on the top. Even if he dismounts, there's no way that he'll be able to get over that fence. And what's the Cyclist For Justice going to do, stay out all night waiting for him to come out? There are far more pressing things for him to do: there's a monster attack going on, for the love of the gods! He'll have to quit the chase and be a hero somewhere else. He'll have to!

Moritsu can almost feel Mumen Rider's breath down his neck. He can almost smell the coppery blood in his nostrils. He can hear the man's breath roaring like a lion. The illusion of proximity goads him on, gives him that final lunatic burst of speed, and sends him through the open gate. He almost falls as he changes direction. He almost pitches over from spilt momentum on the pivot. But he's got a feverish inclination for self-preservation and this is his last chance to avoid the whirlwind's reaping.

"_Aaaagh!_" he screams, falling on instinct and using his broken arm to grasp the sliding wire door. He's too frantic to switch off, too pressed for time to do something less painful. He slams the door shut and throws the padlock into place, hearing it click secure in what might just be the most beautiful sound in the world. He looks up, fully intending to smile at the man he's thwarted.

A little boy stares back.

Despite the darkness, despite the rush of adrenaline, he finds himself face-to-face with the portrait of a young boy taped to the inside of the wire fencing. He can't help it. Red's an extremely powerful color, and your human eyes are drawn to it like moths to flames. The red of the boy's tie over a white dress shirt, the flash of a red baseball cap in the school colors... for a staggering half-second, Moritsu can't look away from the broadsheet bearing the likeness. He shakes with revulsion, but what really gets his blood flowing are the pink-white petals fluttering around the fence like butterflies of doom.

It takes him an agonizing second for his predator's eyes – and he _is_ a predator, despite spending the last few minutes as prey! – to catch movement beyond that portrait. Mumen Rider's no more than ten meters back. He'll chew through that distance faster than Moritsu can believe. He gasps, turns, and bolts. He's safe now, but he can't stay there. He has to hide. He has to escape the man's devilish gaze. He has to escape the flowers and the portrait. He has to...!

Something metallic clatters against the ground.

Something lithe and angry keeps going.

Something wiry rattles under too-human force.

"_**AAAAAAARK!**_**"**

Moritsu looks behind him with wide eyes. Somehow, despite already being as wide as he thinks it's possible eyes to open, his eyes open even wider at the shock of the sight behind him. A dirty, injured, bleeding, stark-raving-mad Mumen Rider's scaling the fence with one good foot. He didn't even _hesitate_. He must've leapt off the bike without ever hitting the brakes, launching himself bodily at this last obstacle! Blood pours from his hands and arms as the wire rips through his clothing and makes a grotesque ruin of his skin. It doesn't even slow him down. He doesn't give it the chance. Pain holds other people back, but not Mumen Rider. Not when lives are on the line.

Not for the first time that baleful day, Moritsu screams, "_What are you?!_"

What is he? He's past the fence, that's what! He drops down inside the construction site and hits the ground running. This was supposed to be Moritsu's sanctuary. Now it's a cage. He's truly inside the lion's den now, and he's barred shut his only true avenue of escape. The only one left is an illusion, but it's one that he takes because what else is he going to do?

Up.

Up he goes.

He dares the scaffolding, he runs for the ladders and makeshift stairs, and he climbs the tower. The two men run past me without knowing and ascend the steel girders and cement retaining walls, past still-burning rivet ovens and over cardboard form-tubes. And with each step Moritsu takes, Mumen Rider takes two. He chews up the distance like a starving man. Mumen Rider's feet hit the girders and I-beams hard, like great hammers striking colossal bells. They beat the dirge of doom behind Moritsu. With every moment that Moritsu stays ahead of the dismounted cyclist, he blitzes through, he _burns through_ his remaining time on Earth in the desperate belief that maybe, just maybe, he can find more if he runs just a little bit faster or just a little bit farther.

But the thing about that kind of thinking is that it can't last you forever. You'll eventually run out of moments and distance. You'll eventually find an obstacle that you can't physically overcome. Some are better about it than others and... well, Moritsu did his best. Whatever his faults, you must admit that he went harder and farther than most men would. But for all of his dedication, the fact is that he's being chased by a better man and he's just an old man with only one good arm, and he's run himself up to the edge of a cliff in almost as literal a manner as is possible.

It's the top floor. He's on edge. No metaphor, he's physically at the edge. He's exhausted every other living avenue of escape, and now he stands at the edge of the building's upmost point with only hard concrete and a gulf of air before him. That gulf seems to swell before him, pushing the ground further away as vertigo threatens to overtake him. So high up, he's actually run back into the light. He's risen above the shadows cast by the adjacent buildings and caught the sun's last rays, which are actually coming _up _at him. The ground below is consumed in darkness, and it may very well be bottomless down there.

The bell stops tolling, but the deep breaths of the hunter don't go away. They stay there, not far behind.

His shoulders sag, defeated.

"Humans are weak,"Moritsu says. His tone's empty, like he's reciting a lesson to a vacant classroom. As the population dwindles, as children die or their parents pull them from school for fear of letting them out of their sights, it's become a common sight. He didn't know why those teachers even bother: it's not like students would take anything away from it. Now, though? Now he knows. It's for his own benefit. It's so that he can feel like he's got some kind of understanding over a world that's been torn out from under him. "We're slow. We're frail. But we're determined. That's how we got so far with such pitiful bodies. We can run. Blast, can we run. We're _endurance runners._ The things that can outrun us can't do it forever. We run them ragged, don't we? Cavemen with sticks and stones ran after prey for kilometers and kilometersuntil they finally either dropped dead or over a cliff. We know that's how it was done because archeologists found Wooly Mammoths with shattered bones at the bases of cliffs. Those beasts were frightened, but... but, they took the plunge because they saw no other option..."

"You do," Mumen Rider says. He's tired and it comes out through every word that he says. "You don't have to take the plunge."

"But you called the Police," Moritsu says. He doesn't look at his pursuer. He just raises his phone and waves it for Mumen Rider to see. "I got the notification. They're after me."

"They're slow to act," Mumen Rider concedes. "But once they have someone to focus on, they won't be stopped. One man like me may get tired, but the force of many with a common goal is unrelenting. They'd have caught you tomorrow if I didn't today. But I can't wait for tomorrow. I need you to talk to me today because tomorrow may be too late. I needed to take you in myself."

For a moment, his gaze shifts out into the shadowed city. Pinpricks of light break up the darkness every now and then. Seconds later, the dull thunderclap of explosions reaches his ear. First the bull, then the giant, now whatever else is rampaging out there... it's another day in the hell of City Z. If the police don't get him, the monsters will eventually. And if not the monsters...well... there's always...

"No," Moritsu says. "No, you won't. _None of you will._"

He jumps.

Mumen Rider doesn't say anything. He doesn't have time. He knows that more lives than Moritsu's hang in the balance if he doesn't act without words or thoughts.

He leaps for the ledge, arm lashing out like a viper. Like a bullwhip. Like a _cannonball_. The torn, bleeding, calloused, shaking, sprained, leather-clad hand lashes out and catches Moritsu's shirt by the collar. This time, _this _piece of apparel's not just sitting on the man's shoulders. It's buttoned up to the throat and there's no way that he's slipping out of this one.

"_Uwarrk!" _Mumen Rider screams as he takes the full weight of the old man on his shoulder. It nearly pulls him over the edge with Moritsu, and the only thing keeping both of them from plummeting to their deaths is the tensile strength of human sinew and inhuman determination.

Feet dangling limply below him, Moritsu drops the phone. Numbly, he watches the rectangle of light disappear into the shadows. Long seconds seem to pass by. He never hears it hit the ground. Maybe it's because of the wind. Maybe it's because he's found the doorway to Hell. It's a nice little poetic conceit, he has to admit. Maybe the darkness _does_ go on forever...

And then the thing smashes into the ground and the phone shatters into a thousand pieces and a hail of sparks.

"_Oh gods I'm going to die!_" Moritsu screams, suddenly cognizant of his own mortality. _"Pull me up! Pull me up!"_

"You picked a fine time to second-guess yourself!" Mumen Rider shouts, voice straining with the effort. "Don't try to help me or anything! _Uuuuuuuraaaaagh!_"

Mumen Rider isn't the strongest man on the planet. He's not even close. Within Class C, he's not even in the upper half. He's just a man with nearly his own weight dangling off of one of his arms. Under normal circumstances, there's nothing that he can do save letting go or waiting for his bones to snap and the man to take his arm to the ground with him.

But adrenaline does strange things to people, and desperation's a great way to drown in it. Slowly, defiantly, Mumen Rider lifts up that arm. With a death grip on Moritsu's collar, he pulls up. He forces himself to a standing position and braces his feet on smooth, slippery metal and he hauls almost seventy kilograms of dead weight up out of the gloom.

_With one hand._

Mumen Rider drops him onto the girders. He lets him fall to the floor and then follows him, sucking down deep breaths and seeing stars shoot across his vision. Like cherry blossoms, they're gone in an instant but more follow after. His arm's killing him and his knees are going to give out and his heart's trying to rip its way out of his chest, but he just saved a man's life and that's almost something to be proud of.

"I almost died!" Moritsu cries. His face is wet with tears and he's cradling himself in his dirty arms. "Gods! I almost died! I almost killed myself! I almost...!"

"I don't..." Mumen Rider starts to say. He's so overcome with emotion that he can't even finish his sentence. The rage won't let him. It doesn't even let him know what he's trying to say. "I don't... You don't f... _cking you... I don't give a... __**f... f... shut... shut the f... SHUT UP!"**_

He's beyond tired. He's beyond patient. Mumen Rider has had a rotten day but, more importantly, he has had _enough._ He lunges across the distance separating them and pins Moritsu against the floor. He's tempted in a very non-Mumen Rider way to finish the job and just throw him over the side, but he's come too far to let the man go now. He presses his face against Moritsu's, dripping blood, sweat, bile, and tears down onto the older man and not caring what he thinks about it now.

"Tell me what I want to know!" Mumen Rider shouts. "Tell me!"

"They'll kill me," Moritsu starts to say. "They'll-"

Mumen Rider slams him down again. The older man almost blacks out from the impact.

"Tell me! Just tell me, already! Tell me what I need to know! If not for their sakes, then for yours! For your _soul!_ We all die eventually, Moritsu, but it's up to you to determine which of a thousand hells you'll go to! A cold hell? A hot _naraka? _For all the blood on your hands, for all of the lives you've ruined, you'll go to the worst one if you don't help me make this right! Help me make this right, Moritsu! Right here, right now! _Help me make this right!_"

For a while, the only sounds that Moritsu can hear are his own heart and the man's wet, ragged breaths. It's getting dark but, so close, he can see through the man's goggles. He can see the tears flowing freely from Mumen Rider's eyes: the angry, desperate emotions boiling out of him. In that instant, Moritsu's convinced: the man's a demon. The man's in the grip of some evil thing, and he's fighting for his own soul just as much as he is Moritsu's.

And in that moment, it finally clicks.

"Their _sakes_," Moritsu says. "Not... not hers."

"Their sakes," Mumen Rider confirms. "Not _just_ hers."

"You haven't been trying to save just one person," Moritsu says slowly. "You knew..."

"There were so many missing children," Mumen Rider says. "So many posters with little boys and girls in red jackets and ties. So many children in a uniform that you only find in City Z Nishi Elementary School. _So many children that you had access to._"

Moritsu makes a little clicking noise in the back of his throat. Mumen Rider can't tell what it is at first. Something rumbles in those clouds that have slowly rolled in over the course of the day, and its trumpet blots out the man for a moment. But then he does it again and sees the tears welling up in his eyes and he knows that he's finally broken him.

"Eighteen million yen," Moritsu says between sobs. "I owed a man eighteen million yen over a bad bet. So I gave him my pension and borrowed the rest from another man, but I couldn't pay _him _back. Not on my salary. The interest just kept building. But then he told me that I could pay him back with more than money. If I gave him children to sell..."

"How many?" Mumen Rider asks. Moritsu chokes a little. Mumen Rider slams the man into the floor again and demands, "How many?!"

"I don't know!" Moritsu says. "He set the exchange rate and I got so little and the interest kept building and he wanted more...!"

"_How can you lose track of something like that?!"_ Mumen Rider screams. _**"How can you...?!"**_

_Forty eight hours, _he thinks. _How can you lose track of __**that?**_

"I don't even care," Mumen Rider says. He glares death into Moritsu's face and says, "I can't save every one that you sold to the devil, but I can save Mitsubishi Tomoe and whoever else they still have. I'm going to do what I can for them. But I need an address, Moritsu. I need somewhere to go because _time's running out!_"

Moritsu stares through Mumen Rider's head, his eyes not focusing. The younger man has to squeeze his shoulders hard, letting the pain drag his attention back to him.

"District Four," Moritsu finally tells him. "Block Eighty-Seven. Building One."

"District Four, Block Eighty-Seven," Mumen Rider repeats, running a map of City Z through his mind. His mind goes to a very specific place. Very few people would know where that was if they weren't as well-traveled as he because it's in the one place that you don't commit to memory. "Right in the middle of Ghost Town. You really don't want people stumbling on the kind of things that your friends must do there, do you?"

Moritsu shakes his head. "The Hero Association won't go there. The Police don't go there unless they have no other choice..."

"But I will," Mumen Rider says. He stands up and hauls Moritsu to his feet. "And when I ride off into the darkness, I want to give something to those I leave behind. I want names, Moritsu. _I want names._ I want names for the authorities to immortalize in the public record and the halls of shame. I want the long arm of the law to swat them as soon as they crawl out of the shadows. When they walk across a street in daylight, when they use a credit card, when they make a phone call, when they visit their families... I want names so that my friends in blue can find them."

Moritsu hesitates. He's already given up too much, but there's no saving him if he gives this up. They'll find him. They'll kill him. They'll do worse than kill him...

But they're not here right now.

They're not gripped in the talons of a demon.

They're not caught in the event horizon of a heart that's lost its soul.

"Himura Hajime," Moritsu says when the fear overwhelms him. "He's the ringleader. He owns a shipping company, and that's how he gets the vans to move everyone. I haven't met him..."

Moritsu goes quiet. Mumen Rider shakes him to loosen his tongue.

"Who else?" Mumen Rider demands. "Who else?!"

"I was roped into this by Hijikata Okita. He's the one that I borrowed the money from, and he never let me out of his debt. He... oh gods, they'll kill me... he owns a chop shop near the school..."

Mumen Rider's fingers tense. Their tips dig deep into the old man's flesh.

"That's it!" Moritsu screams. Only a little part of it comes from the pain. "Hijikata was my contact! He had others with him, but I never learned anyone else's names! He said... oh, gods... he said it'd be safer for everyone if I didn't know more than that... that I couldn't endanger anything..."

The cyclist gives the man one last, long look. The criminal stares into those burning eyes, and he swears that, in that moment, Mumen Rider sees everything that there is to see about him. Every last disgusting thought, each terrible deed, all of the crying children... nothing escapes the demon-rider shrouded in cherry blossoms.

Mumen Rider releases his grip. He shoves the older man away and glares at him through goggles that do nothing to disguise the hate and revulsion in his eyes.

"I want to bring you in," Mumen Rider says. "I want to haul you before a magistrate and see you pay for your crimes. But the clock's ticking. You've got nowhere to run. You can't go back to these people. Make this easy for yourself, Moritsu. I'm going to let the authorities know everything that you just told me, and it's better if you turn yourself in to them than to let them find you."

The two men share a long moment of silence.

"But, more than that?" Mumen Rider asks. "I'm doing this because it's going to let me live with myself. I'm going to be able to go to sleep with a clear conscience. I suggest that you do the same."

And then he's gone. With one bad leg, Mumen Rider finds his way down the bulk of the building.

Moritsu Izumu doesn't follow.

Mumen Rider pulls himself over razor wire and the man's howls fill a night echoing with the roars and booms of monsters.

Moritsu Izumu doesn't follow.

Mumen Rider mounts his bicycle and strains against the agony and torment, and he sets off into the chaos and uncertainty of the crumbling city.

Moritsu Izumu doesn't follow.

Moritsu Izumu doesn't... well, he doesn't really do much of anything. His future's been taken away from him. He stands there on his last day of freedom, his life over. He could turn himself in, but he's not strong enough for that. He knows what happens to people like him in prison. He knows how policemen handle monsters like he's become, and how prisoners handle weak and feeble men like him. And there's no more tempting a target in a prison than a predator of children.

And where does he go, if not to prison? On the run? The lam? Hah! If the police are after him, then there's only so long he can go before he runs afoul of them again. Someone will recognize him. Maybe it'll be a policeman. Maybe it'll be a random person seeing his face on the news. Maybe it'll be a computer program picking him out of a crowd.

That's if he's lucky.

Worst-case scenario? Hijikata or Himura or one of their many friends finds out what he's done and they come looking for him. There are certain things that can only happen to him in prison if the police are negligent. They're a certainty with these men, and they'll find him much easier than the law because they're not bound by it. And he knows, deep down, that not even a prison cell is an adequate defense against them. Even perpetual solitary confinement won't keep their vengeful hands away from him. He's damned even if Mumen Rider succeeds.

What little sense of self-preservation he had – what little resilience he found – slips away into the dusk.

"There's no sleeping with what I've done," Moritsu says, staring off into my eternal night. "And there's no living with myself..."

Resolved, Moritsu calmly removes his shoes, places them on the edge, and takes one step past them.

**^V^V^V^**

**Author Notes**

_(This chapter was originally posted on Friday, June 7th, 2019)_

_(This chapter was edited and re-posted on Tuesday, January 28th, 2020.)_

I'm convinced that coming face to face with a murderous Battousai the Manslayer on a dark street is the absolute scariest experience that one can suffer in life. But hey, it's over quickly. Getting run down by Mumen Rider is probably a more _terrifying _experience just because it takes him longer to catch up to you, and the man_ doesn't quit._ Sure, it's one thing to be a two-story-tall monster from the depths, but I'm convinced that you're probably not a two-story-tall monster from the depths and it's another thing to be (mostly-) human and have this embodiment of JUSTICE hunting you in an endurance match. I don't care who you are: you will lose this race eventually.

I guess that I should also mention that I don't own Chef Gordon Ramsay. I might own the giant version, but I don't own him. He's being used in an entirely fictitious manner, so... yeah. I'm going to be honest: his appearance was the whole reason that I wanted to write this story. Now that it's out of the way? I don't know. I may fall behind on updating this story or just outright abandon it. I don't think that I'll ever top that.

... oh, who am I kidding? Like Moritsu, I'm in too deep now.

The moment that I told my coworkers that I was planning on including a Giant Chef Gordon Ramsay, one of them demanded – well, actually, he just requested because he's polite like that, but he requested very energetically – that I let Giant Chef Gordon Ramsay kill him. I don't know why anyone would want that, but I'm not going to get in the way of one man's dream. I'm not even going to question it because there are some things that man is not meant to know, but... well, I'd feel sorry for you, Todd, but you literally asked for this.

While writing this chapter, I wanted to give a plausible address. I intended to spend a couple of minutes choosing Japanese street names, only to find that they don't exist. It turns out that they don't name streets like my white bread American self is used to: districts and blocks are numbered, and you find a building's address based on the order in which your building was constructed on the block rather than where it falls on a street. I was a delivery driver for ten years, and I don't know how I feel about this. On one hand, the numbers of the buildings on the block are non-sequential, so you can't count houses to figure out which is which if the numbers aren't visible, but on the other hand you're not going to overshoot your target by three blocks because the city planners felt like being cute and skipping two hundred numbers when assigning addresses.

On a related note, since posting the last chapter, I learned that the Japanese school year doesn't have a clear-cut summer vacation like I'm used to, and it actually begins in April and ends in March. By that logic, with the implied timeline of this story, the students should probably be about halfway through their first of three semesters. That one's on me, and I really can't go back and edit things without drastically changing the story. So... sorry about that. We'll just pretend that this is how the school year works in City Z.

It was only after watching _Shin Godzilla_ well after this chapter was originally posted that I learned of the custom of removing one's shoes before jumping. When rewording the last section, I realized that it fit the tone of the scene a lot better than what I'd originally written, and better conveyed the deliberate action that Moritsu was carrying out. It doesn't really change the act of what he did, but I guess that you should be aware that this was one of the changes that I made on my umpteenth read-through of this story well after the fact.

**^V^V^V^**

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Five flights of stairs.

It seemed like a good idea originally, when they were a lot younger and their knees could take it. Now, well into their fifties, the Mitsubishis regret their decision. Sure, the rent's cheap, but they're paying for their mistake in sweat.

"You've only got a finite number of heartbeats in you," the husband says, huffing between every other word. "I think we've shortened our lives by twenty years, climbing these stairs..."

The wife doesn't answer. Her eyes are hard on the next landing, and she's biting her lip to hold her emotions in check.

"But they also say that exercise does you good," the husband tells her. "You actually extend your life expectancy because you're warding off obesity and heart disease through..."

He looks over. There's just hardship there. He sighs and shakes his head. There's a time for lightening the mood, and then there's a time for sincerity.

"She'll come through," he tells her, squeezing her hand. "She wasn't in the wreckage. She can't be dead. Someone will find her. The phone will ring, we'll hear her voice..."

He hears a little choking sound.

"What if...?" the wife asks, unable to say anything else for risk of crying. "What if...?"

"It's too soon to think that," the husband says as the two of them round the corner and head up the last flight of stairs. "It hasn't even been forty-eight hours. She could... she _must _still be...!"

"_Where the hell have you been?!"_

The two of them flinch and nearly tumble down the stairs. Yuki's waiting for them on the top step, eyes wide and red and her fists clenched in anger.

"Not now, Yuki," the wife tells her tiredly. "We're all-"

"Why didn't you tell me?!" she demands, storming down the stairs one powerful step after another. "Why didn't you...?!"

"We told you everything!" the wife snaps, voice rising to a shriek in half a heartbeat. "We know just as much as you do!"

"Bullshit!" Yuki screams. "Bull! Shit! Why didn't you tell me that she was kidnapped?! Why didn't you tell me-"

"_**WHAT?!"**_

Yuki stares dumbfounded at her parents, anger giving way to... well, she's not sure what. Just... she has the time to digest the meaning of that one word for all it's worth and realize that her parents' shocked expressions are genuine.

"You didn't...?" she asks. "Nobody told you...?"

They ignore her question. They press her, asking about a thousand questions a minute. How did she find out? When did she find out? Who told her? Why didn't she call them? What did they say? She can't answer them all. She can't _begin_ to answer them all. She gets lost in a sea of words and doesn't have the air to breathe, let alone answer.

"It's okay," she says under their words. "It's okay. Mumen Rider's looking out for her. He has to find her. He has to..."


	7. Chapter 7

The following is a non-profit fan-based story and the author is unaffiliated with ONE, Shueisha, or Viz Media, who own the rights to _One-Punch Man_. Please support the official releases.

**^V^V^V^**

**:: HUMAN EVIL ::**

**by**

**Seraph of Winters Past**

**.**

**^V^V^V^**

**Chapter Seven**

"**The Cherry Blossom Knight"**

The giant chef tries to muster one last insult. Some caustic, sarcastic, perfectly seasoned quip. He tries to tell the cyborg that you bring the complaints to the servers: customers are never to enter the kitchen. He tries to add a lot of profanity to the mix, but he just doesn't have the heart to say it.

Literally.

"Now, Giant Chef Gordon Ramsay," Genos says, holding the core of the man's cardiovascular system between two chipped and dented metal arms, "You're fired."

Turbines blast a neat sphere of hot plasma in an unbelievable scream that breaks the night into splinters. When the flames blow away in a cloud of smoke and the aroma of burnt meat, all that's left between Genos's arms is so much char and gristle.

"**Th-the meat..."** the giant says, coughing up blood and falling to his knees. One hand clutches at the gaping hole that was once his thorax. The other no longer exists, so there's not much point talking about it. **"... I wanted it... medium-rare... but you not only overcooked it... y-you... burnt it... you wankeerrrrrr..."**

And the giant finally dies.

Genos stands over his fallen foe and allows a grin to flash on his scarred and burnt face. His legs whine and hiss in protest and warning lights flash across his static-laden vision but he ignores it all. He stands in the scarlet-and-sable afterglow of victory and bathes in it.

"Yes," he says, looking down on a trembling hand surging with electric power. "I am Genos, and I have no limits. Do you hear me, Master? I am not at your level, but the way ahead is clear! I am-"

_Splat!_

A sheet of red drenches him. He's blind for a terrifying moment until he can clear his optics.

"Huh?" Saitama asks, letting an aproned, headless corpse the size of a building fall forgotten atop a pile of foes. "Sorry, I couldn't hear you. Colossal Rachael Ray was going on about her 'Baked Devil's Chicken'."

The body finally hits the ground. The impact is so severe that the remnants of the Bakarai Zed Central Banking and Trust building collapse under the seismic onslaught. Saitama stands unfazed. He doesn't look at the source. He doesn't notice the fireball as the body explodes for reasons too convoluted and idiotic to elaborate upon. He just fixes Genos with a bored and emotionless gaze that betrays nothing of his thoughts.

"You were saying something about limits, man?" Saitama asks. "I couldn't hear because of the Devil's Chicken. Did I already say that? I don't know but it sounds delicious. What do you think, should we order her book? I mean, I killed the giant version of her, so I don't know if it's in good taste... but it might taste delicious..."

Genos's eyes whir and click, passing between the resolute man and the flaming corpses behind him. They repeat the pattern about five more times before he stares down at his clenched fist in aggravation. _I have so much further to go on the road to power. Will I ever approach Master Saitama's level?_

He changes gears. His vision peers inward through cyberspace and forms a connection between his bank account and the publishing company. The appropriate transaction is made, and...

"Her book has been purchased," Genos says as grimly and seriously as though challenged to duel the hand of Fate to a thumb-wrestling match. "Both the ebook and hardcover. The former has been downloaded into my databases and the hardcover will arrive at our home by aerial drone in thirty minutes or less."

"Cool, cool," Saitama says. A trace of unease comes through. _It was a joke, bud, but I'll take it._

"You also have fifteen missed calls," Genos says. "I have remotely accessed your telephone. Eight have been marked as spam calls and I've blocked them for you. One call came from King, who left no message. Another is from Mumen Rider, who has left a voicemail. Three are from-"

"Slow down, handsome devil robot!" Saitama barks. Bug-eyed and furious, Saitama pierces him with a gaze that could blow a hole through the Earth if it had physical substance. "Who told you that you could look through my phone?!"

Genos stares.

His eyes flash red three times.

"I have deleted your smartphone's contents from my memory," Genos tells him. "This will not happen again."

"Not the point!" Saitama shouts, marching right up to the metal man and jabbing a finger into his chest. "You shouldn't have been in there in the first place!"

"I apologize, Master," Genos says. A slight edge of fear and shame creeps into his voice. "I only wished to be of more use to-"

There's a flash on the eastern horizon. The smoke and sound follow a few seconds later.

"We'll talk about it when lives are off the line," Saitama says. "You take the explosion on the right, I'll take the fifteen on the left."

"Yes, Master!" Genos says. His turbines roar to life and electricity arcs off of his exposed arms. "We will conquer this night of horrors! This shall be _fifteen on the left?_"

Genos turns to face his teacher. The man's gone already, leaping in the opposite direction towards a series of bright flashes lighting up the western horizon. It's not long before Genos loses track of his white cape amidst so much smoke and steel and starlight.

**^V^V^V^**

The right hand doesn't know what the left is doing.

It's an old saying, but an apt one. "The Fog of War" describes when, in the confusion of combat, one side loses situational awareness. Not only does it not know what the enemy's doing, but the operation's become so complicated that it's lost track of its own elements. Communication breaks down and the whole loses control of its disparate parts. A few may be ignorant, or the entire endeavor might be blind, but the loss of contact jeopardizes everything and turns a bad situation into something truly monstrous. There's no overarching goal, no coordination, no common purpose: there's just chaos in the war.

And this is war. Make no mistake. _This is war._

City Z comes apart. Monsters flood the streets. Heroes run rampant combatting them. Looters scurry underfoot and exploit the chaos. As far as the police are concerned, all of them are the enemy.

There are over thirty thousand policemen in City Z alone, spread out across more than a hundred stations. It's impossible to keep every one of them straight, and _trying _is a task that would challenge the sanity of the twenty most organized individuals on the planet. Tonight, there are just half that number trying.

Messages from emergency call centers flood the lines. Those are the easy ones to deal with: the operators are go-betweens, and they're not fending for or protecting their own lives. They can afford to stay calm and collected. They can afford not to shout.

"_Between six and eight men are shooting at a water tower by the old Grover's Mill because they think it's a Martian tripod..."_

"_A housewife in District Nine reports that her husband was sprayed with some anomalous black fluid and he's turning into a prawn..."_

"_There's a Doctor Alberts asking for help with a lab experiment gone awry. He requests help at the Research Institute..."_

The placid, collected tones actually put the absurdity of some situations into perspective. For some, they actually undercut the severity. But they have this almost calming effect: they give the police dispatchers some illusion that they can contain the situation.

But then you get the first responders. Those men and women who put their lives on the line to protect the public against shooters, thieves, and other mundane threats, suddenly thrust up against inhuman threats the likes of which they could scarcely conceive of a mere three years ago. It's... well, they're trained to remain levelheaded. They try their hardest, bless their hearts, but even they have their limits...

"_Requesting backup! Suspect can breathe fire! He's got a scarf and he can LOOK OUT AAAAAAAA-"_

"_Officer down! I repeat, officer down! The shooter's on the loose, and he still has the boy! Send an ambulance to..."_

"_The blasted thing is spreading like a forest fire! It's sucked in fifty people already!"_

It's hard to deal with. The dispatchers know some of these people. Many of them are friends and they're dying out there. But that's the life they chose: every single man or woman with a badge took up the call to public service willingly, and they accepted the risks. It's sobering, but it helps a little.

But the worst part? The worst part's the public. The sheep being torn apart by the wolves, skipping the emergency call centers and bringing their pleas for help directly to the police stations. They didn't sign up for this. None of them asked to be born into a disintegrating world. And none of them can control the raw, cancerous fear etched into every syllable.

"_...will tell you! That great ever-growing mass of flesh... it is – or it was – a chicken heart! Yes, yes, chicken heart, I tell you. Chicken heart! Listen to me, you fools! Listen! Listen...!"_

"_...I tracked him down and found out where they have Mitsubushi Tomoe! Hijikata Okita was the one who..."_

"_AAAAARCH! Ughg ughgaahfgkhg! GET OFF ME! For the love of God don't do this! __**Don't do this! **__NO! NO! MOMMY NO! __**I DON'T WAN'T TO DIE! I DON-**__"_

They can't help everyone. They can't come _close _to helping everyone. They don't know where all of their own forces are, and people die as the dispatchers try to take stock of their situations. As hundreds of calls for help turn into thousands, they have to abandon more and more people to their fates and they have to pick who they try to save knowing full well that it's too late for most of them. It's almost enough to break them. Before the night's out, a few of them crack. It pales in comparison to what will come in the months ahead, but some of them hang up their uniforms and walk away in despair. They know that nothing can be done but can't take the screams any longer.

**^V^V^V^**

He doesn't know who any of them are.

To be fair, he doesn't really know the names of many members of the Hero Association. He knows the top heroes of each of the classes, sure – Mumen Rider, Hellish Blizzard, Amai Mask, and Blast – and most of the Rank S heroes, but most of the others just kind of blend together into one big, amorphous mass of underachievers.

That goes double when dealing with the aforementioned Hellish Blizzard's gang. Not only are they all interchangeable as far as function goes, but they all look the same. "Uniform" is the right word: they all share a single appearance, and you could cycle names around without missing anything. One person in a suit and tie is the same as the others.

To be honest, he kind of feels naked in front of them. Wearing nothing more than a sleeveless shirt, a pair of shorts, and some sandals, he's cold. They're blasting the air conditioning at maximum power, and he knows that they're doing it on purpose.

Blond Bomber glares at the five men and women around the room. One sits across the table from him, hands folded in front of his mouth. To be honest, Blond Bomber's not even sure that it's a man he's facing. The face is all done up with makeup, and he or she's either got the world's longest eyelashes or some kind of very specific hair extensions. Maybe if there was any talking...

"Where is she?" Blond Bomber asks. Then, he _demands, _"Where. Is. She?"

Nothing.

His opposite doesn't even blink. That gaze stays level, the hands are held fast against the face, and eye contact remains unbroken. The psychic can't see a mouth behind the hands, but he knows, just _knows, _that there's a smirk there. There's this slight wrinkling around the eyes that gives it away. It's not a crocodile smile, or the kind of fake smile that you see on actors. It's the kind of slight contortion of the face that tells you that someone is genuinely happy. Amused, really, in this circumstance. Silent laughter's being had at his expense.

Blond Bomber's gaze slides away from the eyelashes. They sweep over the two people by the door. Not much use describing them, other than to say that one's slight and feminine and the other's big and masculine. Doesn't really mean anything when you get down to it, but that's the first impression that comes to mind.

"She is coming, isn't she?" he asks the slender one beside the door. "Or is this just some kind of elaborate prank?"

Nothing. None of them say a word. Everyone stares blankly ahead. Well, except for the one with the eyelashes. Blond Bomber may have broken eye contact, but that one keeps boring into him in silent mockery. It's unsettling, and he can't really concentrate under that amused gaze.

"I walked twenty kilometers to get here," Blond Bomber says. "I'd have taken the train, but your boss said to walk _or else._ So here I am, and she's not here. She's not coming, is she?"

Silence.

"It's been an hour!" the disgraced hero barks. "She'd better be here in ten seconds, or I'm walking!"

Just miserable, damnable silence.

"Fine!" Blond Bomber says, jumping to his feet. "I'm g-"

The tinny sound of recorded laughter plays behind him. Many people in close confines. He hears his own panicked voice alternatively apologizing and gibbering in disbelief.

"_It's so small!" _a woman laughs. Another jilted woman's boyfriend snickers, _"I was afraid of _that?_ Hah!"_

Blond Bomber glares behind him, where another two men or women stand against the wall. One of them's holding a cell phone, and the video of the incident at the bar plays out across the little rectangle of light like a nightmare. The ganger doesn't smile and doesn't twitch. There's just this blank expression pointed straight ahead, as though Blond Bomber's not even there. Wordlessly, the expression and gesture tell him everything. _"We have you by the balls. And everyone's going to see them if you leave this room. I don't even need to acknowledge your existence: you're going to hang yourself through your own actions."_

"Blast," Blond Bomber mutters, sitting down again. "Damn you..."

He suffers under the mocking silence and heartless stare for almost fifteen more minutes before he hears footsteps approaching. They come fast – so fast that there isn't time to react to them – and hard. The door bursts open, and there she is: the woman in the black dress, flanked by two men in black suits. She enters with a bang and doesn't allow the echo to die before filling the air with her powerful, forceful words.

"Blond Bomber," she announces. "Rank 13 in Class B. I am Hellish Blizzard. You will call me Madam."

The half-naked man rises from his chair, points a finger, and gets out one syllable.

"I-"

Her eyes flash green and the air fills with bitter cold. The walls turn white with crawling hoarfrost and this audible _crack! _of glass from parts unknown drowns out the man's words. His breath clouds before his eyes. The clocks run backwards. His skin... oh, Blast, his skin feels like it's going to firm up like ice on a lake and shatter!

"You take orders now," Blizzard tells him. "This is your first. _You will call me Madam. _It is the first and last word in every sentence directed towards me. Do you understand?"

Words can't describe just how loud her voice is. It's more than volume: it booms with authority. The possibility of disobedience doesn't exist to her. She's stated a fact and there's no arguing with facts. Not with her. Not now, not ever. For a moment, despite his best efforts to answer, he can't. The cold grips his heart as though it's a living thing and _squeezes._ There's no air in his lungs: it's all ice and snow and it hurts. Oh, how it _hurts!_

"Y-yes..."

"Ahem," the one with the eyelashes says. Despite the force of the master's entrance, those eyes have never broken from his. But now they narrow. Now, there's actual hostility there.

"M-m-m..." Blond Bomber stammers, hugging his arms for warmth. "_M-madam_... yes _madam..._"

Blizzard smiles. It's one to warm the room. And considering the nature of the one who does it, that's no metaphor. The mercury rises a good five degrees. Not enough to melt the unnatural frost, but enough to take away some of its sting.

"Good," she says, advancing towards the table. Without even seeing her, the one at the table vacates the seat and offers it to her. She's halfway seated when a piercing sound fills the room. She flinches – somehow, this woman around whom the whole world revolves actually flinches! – and turns her gaze back towards one of her bodyguards. The one who looks like an ape, and who Blond Bomber swears looks familiar somehow. The sound's coming from his breast pocket.

_Ring! Ring! Ring!_

She sighs, flips her wrist over, and the man's outside the room as fast as is politely possible. And then it's back to business like nothing happened.

"I possess certain footage that would be detrimental to your career should it see the light of day," Blizzard tells him as the one with the eyelashes pushes her seat closer to the table. Despite creating so much cold, he can _feel _the heat radiating off of her. "You will join the Blizzard Bunch, and I will ensure that nobody ever sees it. These are my terms, do you accept?"

"Madam, yes madam," he says. There's too much cold and pain to argue. There's only whatever she wants. "M-madam, yes mad-"

"I heard you the first time," Blizzard tells him. She snaps a perfectly manicured finger and her remaining bodyguard slides a stack of papers two centimeters tall towards him. "You will sign every dotted line, and there are eighteen-hundred of them. But first..."

She pauses. The apelike bodyguard's voice is little more than a whisper from out in the hall, but it's still distracting.

"The Mistress is occupied negotiating a contract with Blond Bomber presently," the big man says. "She is delighted that you are alive but insists that she cannot be disturbed presently. I will, of course, take a message..."

She tilts her head, and the masculine figure beside the door quietly swings it shut. With nothing to distract from her, Blizzard repeats and finishes her sentence. "But first, you will tell me why you chose the title Blond Bomber."

"I-I didn't," he starts, stops, and backtracks. "_Madam_, I di-didn't. It's the superhero n-name given to me b-by-by-bythe Hero Association. I l-liked it bec-"

Her bodyguard slams a small glass bottle against the table so hard that he has no idea how it doesn't shatter. The suddenness and violence of it sends him sprawling. He falls, actually _falls_ from his chair in shock.

"Black Henna," she declares, gesturing to the bottle. "You will dye your hair this color and we will start calling you the Raven Bomber. Soon, everyone will."

"_**Why?!"**_ Blond Bomber demands. The world around him rumbles so thoroughly and subtly that the nails start coming out of the walls. An inhuman force builds, builds, builds in the air, and the universe draws in a deep breath. There's so much power building in the space that normal rules don't apply. The frost flashes to steam and skips the liquid state. The papers float, freed from the bonds of gravity. The lights fail and strobe. His short hair and the folds of his shirt dance and waver as though caught in a hurricane.

And then it stops.

"It's _Madam,_" Blizzard tells the upstart superhero on the floor, who's looking around himself in bafflement and horror. She gestures to the men and women all around them, all of their eyes glowing green in the flickering light. "Psychic Binding. I taught it to them in case we ever had to fight my sister. It turns out that it doesn't work so well on someone as powerful as her."

His chair strikes him like a flyswatter, smashing him against the wall and holding him there.

"Or me," she says, taking the first page from the bundle. "Now, this can be confusing for someone as small-minded as you, so let's take this from the top. Ahem... 'Welcome to the Blizzard Bunch. We are a friendly, career-oriented organization dedicated to performing the greatest good with the greatest numbers...'"

**^V^V^V^**

The one called the Strongest Man on Earth sits in the pale glow of his television screen, eyes focused squarely on his prey. His heart thunders and booms with excitement and even, he has to admit, fear. It's been a long time since he faced such a challenge. Such a thrill...

His swordswoman takes on the General of Hell on his lair. Healing's disabled and damage is halved. That makes this perhaps the most challenging boss in the whole game. Forget the dragon serving as the actual villain of the singleplayer campaign: the lich atop the mountain's the greatest threat.

King's nothing if not resourceful, though. Even as the world thunders and booms around him, as his floor shakes under the onslaught of many monsters and heroes battling, he pours all of his determination and wherewithal into the game through the buttons on a flimsy piece of plastic. He's determined to do alone what raid groups of twenty or more struggle to do together.

You see, as a World Boss, the undead wizard is immune to most of the truly debilitating status effects. Paralysis, Frog, Mini, Poison, Bleeding, Burning, Slow... none of them work. But forced movement? It turns out that he's not completely immune to that. You can't teleport him, and your shoving attacks don't work, but he's nudged back a little with every hit to his shield-arm and you can lure him a certain way by feinting just so at his leg.

King presses the advantage. Pixel by pixel, blow by blow, he forces the enemy back. He doesn't even pay attention to the health bar: the lich has five of them and he hasn't visibly depleted any of them in the three hours he's been at this. He just focuses on two things: exploiting the glitch and protecting himself.

And really, that first part's not even that hard. That second one? That's the challenge. He's warding off the soul-drain, bleed, and paralysis through twenty-seven different buffs and thirteen different maneuvers that, when properly sequenced, provide an impenetrable barrier against the black magic. Each one has a cooldown timer. Each one has a set duration shorter than said timer. He has to cycle through the various abilities as they recharge to cover the gaps in his defenses just long enough for another ability to recharge and take over the same duty. And if he messes up once, it's all over. This isn't a battle of attrition. This isn't a contest of juggernauts. This is a lethal juggling competition and his opponent is gravity. He just has to keep enough buffs airborne for his unbroken onslaught to finally tip the boss over the edge. Literally.

Because they're fighting atop a mountain.

His telephone rings. He's so wrapped up in the game that he doesn't realize it at first. It's only on the third ring that the sound breaks through to him, but it's not enough to break his concentration. If every little stop and start got to him, he'd have never made it so far in the gaming community. Not even kicking off a sandal and gripping the phone with his toes is enough to break the ongoing chain of buffs and commands. He slides the phone in front of him and taps the speaker button with his heel. Without ever looking at the screen, he accepts the call and says, "I say, I say, the King of Heroes answers his call."

He hears nothing but shallow, desperate breaths and rushing air for a few seconds. Then a gasp, and a man shouting, "District Four! Block Eighty-Seven!"

"Who is this?" King asks. His voice never breaks from a level and thoughtless groan. He'd have to be invested in his surroundings and take some attention off of the screen to have any feelings towards the man on the line.

"It's Mumen Rider!" the voice on the phone says. "King, I need you to meet me in Ghost Town! That's where they took her! I tried getting the police and Saitama and Genos and Blizzard, but they're all busy! I need your help, King!"

"I'm sorry," King says with all the sincerity of a zombie. The clash of swords, the shattering of jewels, and the screams of two fantastical warriors locked in mortal combat roar louder than his words and provide a martial overtone. "I'm fighting my own battle presently. I expect I'll be fighting it for another six hours. The lich has vexed many warriors for months and I won't stop until I've hurled him from the parapets. Ask another hero for aid: I cannot break from this fight."

"Wait! I ne-"

_Beep!_

Without any more distractions to endanger his victory, King continues the fight like a man possessed.

**^V^V^V^**

When he was in high school, McCoy took a course on economics. It's no exaggeration to say that it and the promise of little green strips of paper changed his life and, in doing so, the lives of countless others. What he took away – apart from 'Always Look Out For Number One' – is this little adage that his teacher repeated _ad nauseum_ through the entire semester until it became his motto:

"There's no such thing as a problem: only an opportunity."

Put a little less simply, every situation presents a method of exploitation for the clever and lucky. One man's suffering is another man's chance to make a lot of money providing a solution. If someone needs something, you rush in and provide it. If you beat the competition, you get to set the selling price and nobody can argue.

As far as he's concerned, that's why the Hero Association was created. The public faced threats that ordinary measures like the police couldn't handle, so someone gathered the most talented and powerful individuals on the continent under one organization to combat them. For the most part, it's been a rousing success. With only one option to present against obliteration, donations flooded in. McCoy didn't found the organization, but he go in early and stood there raking it in like autumn leaves on a lawn.

He stood there to play God.

"So, let me get this straight," he says about twice as loud as he needs for his earbud to pick up his words. Typing all the while, he repeats the requests of the man on the other end of the line for clarity. "You're on the roof of Tower Four and the monster is breaking down the door, and you need a flyer to get you to safety?"

It's not quite a cubicle, but there's this distance between desks that generally keeps employees from interacting with each other. They're aided in this by the pretty lights dancing across their monitors and the enormity of their tasks: they might as well operate in their own separate worlds. Despite this, and despite himself, the adjacent, bespectacled worker can't help but be distracted by McCoy's words. The older man with the eyepatch speaks with such casual disdain that he's impossible to ignore and, to be honest, it kind of boils his blood listening.

"Very well," McCoy says after a lengthy silence. "I'm dispatching a B-class hero to your location as we speak. She's everything that you need. Have a good day!"

There's a pause of no more than a second and a half before he's onto the next one. It's so sudden that Bespectacled flinches. It stops him from taking his next call because he can't believe what he's listening to.

"The phone call came from inside the house?" McCoy asks. "Stay put and don't make any noise. I'll send a hero immediately. He'll have a baseball bat. Alright? Alright. Have a lovely evening!"

McCoy clicks off on the call. This time, Bespectacled is looking for it. This time, he knows for a fact that he's seeing it right. _The man's not logging his calls._

"What are you doing?" he asks. "_What are you doing?"_

"Mhmm, District Four," McCoy plows on ahead with the next one. "Block Eighty-Seven..."

Bespectacled clamps a hand down hard on McCoy's shoulder and spins him around in his chair to face him, demanding, _"What are you doing?!"_

"My job," McCoy says. "Saving lives."

"Bullshit!" Bespectacled replies. "You're not sending anybody after these people!"

"Oh, good, you noticed," McCoy snorts. "Not all lives are made equal. We're getting thousands of calls for help and we have about five hundred heroes. Three hundred and sixty active. We can't save everyone, so we have to discriminate. Some are as good as dead and hope's the only thing that I can give them. We have to move on to the ones we _can _save, or the greatest number in the greatest need."

"You're not even trying!" Bespectacled shouts. "You're-"

McCoy braces his feet and shoves the younger man back. Unprepared on a wheeled chair as he is, Bespectacled goes flying back and almost pitches out of his seat. He's too startled to intervene in what happens next.

"Mitsubishi Tomoe, held in..." McCoy pauses. He taps his earbud a few times. "Oh, you heard that? Well... sorry, I guess. You're a hero, so you know how it goes. I'm assigning Mumen Rider to this. Yes, you. I'm assigning _you._ You're a hero and I'm giving this back to you to deal with. As I told _him, _we don't have the numbers to spare. No, no. Well, a lot of other people have tried everybody they can think of and have nobody else to call but us. And now you're asking for help, so I can't send you to help any of them, how does that make you feel? Have fun storming the castle!"

McCoy double-clicks a button on his monitor. In the space of a quarter-second, he shuts down one call and takes another.

"I say, I say, this is the Hero Association..." McCoy says, settling down to listen to another plaintive cry for help.

Bespectacled finally finds his voice. "You're killing them. You're killing them...!"

"Narinkiiiiii!" McCoy says, all trace of sarcasm and disdain replaced by the joyful tones of friendship. "How have you been, my favorite sponsor? Peckish, eh? Want to try something more savory than sushi? Well, unfortunately, Metal Bat is on our Do Not Call list, so I can't get him to chaperone your son again. Will Darkshine do? That is terrific, and he is terrific, and, if you don't mind the grease, I have heard great things about a _Kare Pan _restaurant in his neck of the woods..."

_You can't save everyone, and the little people don't pay the bills, _McCoy tells himself as the words flow like honey and the bespectacled worker disappears from his memory. _But the big ones you go above and beyond for because they keep coming back and making it worth your while._

**^V^V^V^**

It's a luxury that he shouldn't take.

Not with so little time left. Not with so much on the line. But, despite that, he can't help himself. He's not going to get any help, and the odds are stacked so highly against him that he's probably going to fail. Either the children have been moved out, he can't force his way in, or... well... he needs to prepare.

Mumen Rider's never been fond of airplanes. In his opinion, there's plenty that you can do within walking distance. Or biking distance, because that's just what he's into. Nonetheless, that one line from the flight attendants has some merit: "Help yourself before you help others." It's not his first rule, and he ignores it where it conflicts with the one he learned in driver's school, but there are times when he has to keep it in mind and contemplate the meaning behind it. After all, you can't help anybody if you're dead.

And truth be told, Mumen Rider's falling apart.

There isn't much time. He may already be too late, and he knows it, and he wants to spend as little time here as possible. He'd kick in the door, but his feet hurt too much. Especially his left. It feels like broken glass running a malicious ballet through his leg every time he puts weight on it, playing havoc with his nerves. He's got to do something about the foot if he's going to keep this up, and a little ibuprofen isn't going to do it.

Kicking it in being out of the question, he tries to take fifteen seconds to deal with the door in the conventional way. But he's dizzy from pain and fatigue and hunger and his vision's all blurry and he has a hard time concentrating due to all of that head trauma, and his fifteen seconds turn into ninety spent fumbling.

"Come on," he mutters, pressing his weight against the door to prop himself up. He doesn't know if he'll be able to stand once he pulls himself away, but he's got to deal with one problem at a time.

"You have the key upside-down," I tell him. "Here..."

I stabilize his hand and guide the key home, and then I help him turn open the lock. He stumbles in, mumbles a semi-conscious thanks, and closes the door behind him and thinks nothing further of me. He's never been one to make a big fuss over minor triumphs and slips into the small apartment so quietly that his neighbors never know that he's there. It's small enough that it makes the Mitsubishi family's _danchi _look spacious by comparison. There aren't even any allotments for his bicycle outside: he has to park it against a futon, and that big of an obstacle just makes the apartment look so much smaller. It's not much, but it's home. Everything that he owns is inside. It's a shame that he probably won't see it again.

"Bandages," he mumbles, picking up the bicycle where he dropped it. He feels around inside the basket, asking, "Where are you...?"

His first aid kit's not there. He's got no idea when he lost that. Maybe he gave it to one of his helpers at the bank and they ran away with it when the bull attacked. Maybe it fell out on any one of the half-dozen times he fell after that. Maybe... no, doesn't matter. Not like he's going to find it now, is he? He'll have to get some more from the kitchen.

This brings another problem to light. He stumbles through the home and fumbles through a cabinet and honestly has no memory crossing the intervening space as his perception of time warps. He stands there, swallowing some ibuprofen and looking down at the bandages, all covered in splotches of color. Some black, some red, some brown. Some dry, some fresh. He doesn't know where his blood ends and the dirt begins and how much grease is mixed in.

Mumen Rider is _filthy_. He's been riding and fighting nonstop for over 24 hours. Only now does he realize just how badly that reeks. Only now does he realize just how serious a biohazard he's become, and how much he's burning up under a fever that turns every square centimeter of exposed skin cherry-red where it's not stained dirty.

He drops the bandage and goes to grab some more. He ditches that, grabs a towel from the countertop, and uses _that _to grab more bandages: better to not have all the filth on something he's going to wrap over his injuries. Then he hobbles toward the bathroom, peeling off one infectious, unsanitary article of clothing after another. It should feel good, getting all that weight and gristle off after so much punishment, but the truth is that it hurts like nobody's business. So much coarse fabric sliding over cuts and bruises ancient and new, so much stinging air blasting a beaten and aching body... he's got nobody to blame but himself, and he's going to make it worse before it gets better.

Into hot water he goes, and he doesn't remember turning that on either. He's just there, standing under a scalding stream. Muscles tense under the pain of so many injuries being exposed to torturous heat. Muscles relax under the coaxing of the soothing heat. He slips and falls and damn it, he guesses he's taking a bath now. The water starts clear, but it's not long before it's this disgusting tobacco-brown soup as it purges his skin of the detritus of a hot summer day.

Long minutes pass. Minutes that he loses track of as the heat and pain and relief overwhelm conscious thought. Minutes during which the water goes from brown to pink and yellow: where all the dirt's gone but the steady trickling of blood never lets it go fully clear again. He only comes out of it when his head sinks below the surface and he sputters up a lungful of wretched, bloody, soapy water. He pulls the plug and somehow turns off the water with his good foot and he doesn't sprain anything.

Getting home was a challenge. Getting out of the tub's an _ordeal._ Even when it's drained, it's still a slippery plastic bowl and all of the adhesive rubber strips don't help a man with a broken foot. But Mumen Rider's Mumen Rider, and he doesn't care if he's facing down a mad Hammerhead in power armor or a frictionless bathroom: he's going to tackle the problem until his body gives out or he succeeds. Now, a tub's much less steep an obstacle than an unemployed baldy in an experimental combat suit, so he does eventually carry the day. Mostly because the tub doesn't really fight back and he can fight it until he finally overcomes it, where the Hammerhead fight ended in one punch. He's got to pull himself up by the curtains and crawl over the side to do it, landing on the hard floor with a groan in the aftermath, but he's out and drying off and making a ruddy mess of the towel.

Then he bandages himself up and soon he's looking like a mummy. It'd be easier to list the places that he leaves exposed than it would to say what he covers because, frankly, there isn't a square centimeter of flesh that doesn't need some kind of care. He's got more than two dozen gauze pads sandwiched between his skin and sterile bandages, and he's a lumpy mess when it's done. But he pays the most attention to his left leg. He cushions his foot in so many pads that it almost looks like a club, and he binds it up so tightly that he nearly chokes off the blood flow. It does the trick: compression holds the broken bones in place. Only the pressure holds back a scintilla of the pain. Only brute-force determination lets him cope with the rest.

Sweat and dirt wiped from his body, blood contained, he suits up like a samurai going off to war. He's got one fresh riding outfit left, and he's dismayed that he can't use it. He's so padded up that he can't slip into the tight leather. He has to content himself with some stretchy, moisture-wicking apparel instead. On one hand, that's probably a blessing in disguise because his limbs weigh about a ton apiece and he doesn't know if he can make it to the destination with so much leather weighing him down. On the other hand, if he falls – and being Mumen Rider means falling, falling often, and falling hard – then he's only going to have some cotton bandages and flimsy gauze to stop his skin from tearing open. That's to say nothing if he has to take on more razor-wire...

"Blast," he mutters as the fabric slides over his bandages. Even with that protective barrier in the way, it hurts. "I'd really like some Kevlar..."

And then that's it. He's buckling on his helmet and padded gear and the last thing left is his gauntlets. He's about to put those on when he remembers that they're going to kill his manual dexterity. That means something, and it takes him a moment to remember why.

He drops the gauntlets and heads for the kitchen. He pulls out an envelope, a pen, and some paper and he sits down at his table and starts writing.

"My name's Tanaka," he mutters as he writes. "You know me as Mumen Rider, the Cyclist For Justice. I called the police, I called all of the heroes that I know, and I called the Hero Association itself. None of them can help me. I'm alone. I'm going into this without help. Everyone either can't come or they won't. I'm screwed. I'm rushing in where angels fear to tread and I'm so freaking screwed it'd be hysterical if my life wasn't on the line. I can't do this alone..."

_No you don't, _Mumen Rider tells himself. _Don't you dare make this about you. This was never about you. You're trying to justify not going through with this, aren't you? Laying out everything that you expect to happen in an appeal to sanity. To convince yourself to walk away. You're only human, but you never let fear get in the way. Don't start now!_

"... but I'm going to try anyways. I've discovered the whereabouts of Mitsubishi Tomoe, the girl who went missing yesterday..." he continues, and he writes down everything he knows. The man with the mole, finding out that his name's Moritsu, that he's abducted many children at the behest of a criminal named Hijikata who owns a chop shop, that they all work for a crime lord named Himura, what Moritsu said about the warehouse in Ghost Town... everything that could help the authorities, he lays out in ink.

He does this because of the folly of an ancient philosopher. That man once said that writing was the death of memory, and that you'd allow yourself to forget things if you didn't properly commit them to your thoughts. If the paper's lost, then the memory goes with it. Ironically, the man's words only survive because they were written down. Written words – be they on paper or stone or computers – allow people to transmit ideas to the future even when those who remember them are long dead. He does this because nobody's listened to him today, and he wants to leave something behind in case he's not there to say it tomorrow.

It's enough to make his hands shake.

He gives the letter one last read-through, is content that he's put down everything important, and nods his head in approval. It'll have to do. He seals it in an envelope, addresses and stamps it, and that's it. That's all the time that he can allow himself. He's probably stayed too long as it is. Justice delayed is justice denied, and his dalliance may have cost a life already. He tightens his helmet straps, adjusts his goggles, grabs some protein bars and an energy drink, and starts heading for his bike, his gauntlets, and the door.

And yet...

Mumen Rider doubles back. He pulls out a little strip of paper and a brush from a drawer. He dips the brush into the ink, moves the brush over the paper... and has no idea what to write.

"Damn it," he mutters as a droplet of black splatters against the white. "This is stupid. I should..."

Thunder rumbles in the distance. And despite being in a little room with no windows, he sees the flash of lightning. He sees his shadow cast upon the wall. He sees his silhouette beside the trunk of a tree in bloom, showering petals like snow. And he sees that he's not alone under the cherry blossoms that never thin. And he sees his hands move almost of their own volition.

_Cherry blossoms fall,_

_A rainstorm of pink and white,_

_Upon careless soil._

_But sad though the end may be,_

_My brief dance down gladdens me._

In older times, they called this sort of thing a _jisei: _a death poem. They were written on the eve of death – or when it at least seemed certain – as a contemplation of one's fate. In the last great war, kamikaze pilots composed them before strapping into flying bombs and daring their enemies' guns in suicide runs. Ultimately futile, ultimately pointless, they did it because they believed that they stood a chance of achieving something meaningful with a last act of defiance. With no bodies left to send home, their morbid poems offered a kind of closure to those they left behind.

Mumen Rider looks down at his words. He could probably refine them some more, include a few puns, and maybe even add a second verse, but now he's really indulged himself too long and he knows it. He can't even wait for the ink to dry or address an envelope. He lets the wet brush sit on a corner of the paper as his only form of signature, slaps his gauntlets home, and dashes out the door.

"You haven't let me down so far!" he screams out into the night, mounting his metal steed. "Please... whoever you are... don't start now!"

His only response is the darkness of the murdered day, and the storm-winds bring with them the crackle of lightning, the bitterness of cold, and the smell of flowers.

**^V^V^V^**

**Author Notes**

_(Originally uploaded on Saturday, June 22nd, 2019)_

_(This chapter was edited and re-posted on Wednesday, January 29th, 2020.)_

So, this was originally going to be the stinger for the previous chapter. I was going to show Mumen Rider preparing to go out into the night, interspersed with snippets of the phone calls that he made before heading out on his do-or-die mission. It ended up being over a thousand words long, at which point I realized that it would do better as its own chapter. So, I lopped it off, wrote a new stinger for the old chapter, and expanded and elaborated on everything from the old stinger until it was pretty much an entirely new chapter. Originally, each one of the people/groups that he called got a single paragraph of dialogue, and you got it the way that Mumen Rider did. I flipped it around so that you got everyone's reaction to Mumen Rider's calls for help, saw what they were going through at the time, but never actually saw him making the calls. That's how about five paragraphs expanded to dwarf the originally intended scene of Mumen Rider suiting up and writing a poem.

Concerning Hellish Blizzard... I know that her powers don't actually include cryokinesis, and I don't think that I really gave her any. One of my favorite things from Warhammer 40,000 is how psychic powers are often accompanied by paranormal phenomena, and I flagrantly rip it off whenever I'm writing psychics or mages here and elsewhere. I gave Blond Bomber a few in the first few chapters, what with all of the shaking and the world going quiet and gravity taking a hike, so I thought that it might be fun to do something similar for Blizzard. And when your superhero name is _Hellish Blizzard_, the phenomena kind of write themselves, don't they? If I do anything else with her in the future, I'll have a lot of cold phenomena (and clocks running backward because I just like the imagery) accompanying her. And, I guess, I should mention that her scene here exists for two reasons: the first is to tie up the Blond Bomber subplot, and the second is that we only ever see her trying to trick or force Saitama and Friends into her gang. Which is actually how a lot of Saitama/Blizzard stories start, I realize. So, we've never actually seen her successfully recruit anyone, and I thought that it'd be fun to show her pulling it off against someone weaker than her. And let's be honest: until Saitama came along, it was _always _against someone weaker than her.

For the most part, the calls for help going to the police were based on horror or sci-fi stories, or were otherwise references. There was a _District Nine_ reference with the prawn, the guy with the scarf is Natsu from _Fairy Tail_, the water tower incident was an actual thing that happened during Orson Welles's radio play adaptation of _The War of the Worlds, _and I either referenced or directly quoted the "Chicken Heart" story from the old _Lights Out_ radio program three times. That last one got so much mileage that I feel like a plagiarist...

Last thing to say here is that, in college, I took a class on poetry. I don't have it anymore, but the teacher made us buy a book filled with translated _tanka – _a kind of Japanese poem with a 5-7-5-7-7 syllable structure – written around the turn of the 20th Century, and the Russo-Japanese War in particular. I don't know if it's true, and it may just be the kind of thing that people with literary degrees theorize about to justify spending thousands of dollars and many years on an education with few applications outside of academia would say, but my teacher explained that a haiku evolved out of the tanka: if you take off the last two lines, you get a haiku. She brought this up because it fundamentally changes the purpose of the poem. Those last two lines are meant to offer perspective or an ironic twist to the first three lines, which puts them into a whole new meaning. Kind of like an author note at the end of a fanfic chapter, which...

... wait a moment...

**^V^V^V^**

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

He looks kind of familiar.

"I see that you've taken good care of my children!" the four-armed beast of a man yells. Well... not really yells. Just, kind of booms. His voice is inconsiderately loud like that. His brazen body almost seems to waver and dance under the harsh light of his swords burning crimson in the failed light.

For the life of him, Saitama can't place the guy. He knows that they met, but he just can't remember where. Everybody just merges together into this mishmash of facial features and voices and you can't pull one out from the rest to save your life. It makes his nascent social life frustrating because who even is that old guy trying to teach him martial arts? It started with a B...

"You could say that," Saitama says, dragging himself back into the moment and looking around the street at the dozens of bronze-skinned bodies with their ornate terra-cotta helms. He should be excited. His heart should be racing right about now. But it's all just too boring, and they all died too easily. He doesn't know how many there were, and it's not like he can count now: they've been torn into so many pieces that you'll never know where one corpse ends and another begins. "They couldn't take care of themselves, you know."

"Well, well," chuckles the behemoth, easily three times his height. "Let's see how you fare against the... the... against the..."

He blinks. All three of his golden eyes – orbs of magma in his golden mask – blink several times. They finally settle on a narrowed, confused look that actually takes Saitama off-guard.

"... you...? We've... we've met, haven't we?"

"It's not just me?" Saitama asks. "You're also getting that feeling?"

"We've met in a way," the monster says. "You've been in my dreams... in _his _dreams...!"

"Nowwwwww you're getting kinda creepy," Saitama says as he takes a wary step backwards. "Nobody dreams of me but a cyborg who can't take a hint. Leave me out of your dreams, man!"

"The exhilaration of a real fight," the monster says. "He died and died again to you in the dreams he gave to me. My children... no, _his_ children came to take the surface... I was Nobuo Kenji and he made my dreams his own and they brought me to his statue. He made me-!"

And suddenly the four-armed swordsman has no face. All that grey matter and blood and bone fragments now decorate the nearby buildings. They needed a fresh coat of paint anyways.

"Now we're both disappointed," Saitama says, unmoved as the huge corpse falls before him. "Well, it was nice talk, but things are still blowing up and people are still dying. I doubt that anything consequential will happen tonight, but I can dream, can't I?"

He looks down at the corpse among a whole lot of other corpses.

"And why am I asking you?"


	8. Chapter 8

The following is a non-profit fan-based story and the author is unaffiliated with ONE, Shueisha, or Viz Media, who own the rights to _One-Punch Man_. Please support the official releases.

**^V^V^V^**

**:: HUMAN EVIL ::**

**by**

**Seraph of Winters Past**

**^V^V^V^**

**Chapter Eight**

"**Life and Death"**

Surely you've heard of Tombs of Unknown Soldiers.

Hardly a national idea, countries all over the world erect them. Monuments to the dead whose names are known only to me, the tombs could contain virtually anyone who went missing in combat. For that reason, they symbolize all of them. They stand in commemoration of every single soldier who fell anonymously.

They're all guarded. Hallowed ground, revered ground... whatever you want to call it, these places are guarded at all times. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week... there's never a moment when a soldier doesn't stand as a sentinel over their fallen countryman. And because the man or woman in the tomb could be anyone from a lowly private or cadet to a general or admiral, they never send a subpar or average guard. It's one of the highest honors that a serviceman or servicewoman could hope for, and there's never a shortage of volunteers for the position. And because of the symbolism and importance of the duty, the powers that be screen those applicants. In some places, a fraction of a percent pass selection and training.

There are anecdotes and photographs and videos of the absurd dedication that these guards employ in their duties. They're seen standing vigil in rain and sleet, during tornados and blizzards. Sure, they have guardhouses that they could take shelter in, but they never use them. They view it as an insult to the dead.

There's a video that you may have seen of an infamous Changing of the Guard ceremony. An outgoing soldier turned over his rifle in his hands, fumbled it, and dropped the weapon bayonet-first through his replacement's foot. The victim's only reaction was to flinch. With a bleeding, impaled foot, he relieved the offending soldier and began his watch. He himself was relieved shortly thereafter, but this takes nothing away from his determination to defend that post.

Perhaps the most stunning display of dedication came from another country half a world away. A man stood sentinel over another tomb to unknown soldiers, and he was forbidden from leaving his post except through relief or death. The tomb happened to be in the middle of a city during a riot, and the authorities went in to clear it. Rioters gathered near the tomb, and the police launched tear gas at the lot of them. The rioters panicked. The rioters screamed. The rioters fled. The guard did not. Eyes burning, throat swelling, skin searing, the man stood there and took it. The only sign of distress that he displayed was an utterly silent stream of tears that he refused to wipe.

Sufficiently motivated guards are capable of extraordinary feats in execution of their duties. Properly trained, properly committed, they never waver. They ignore any distractions and destroy or drive off anything that threatens their charge. Such men and women are not to be trifled with.

This is not a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

This is a warehouse.

These are not handpicked soldiers.

These are thugs.

They are very bored.

They're standing in front of – what else? – chain-link fencing. There isn't even a gate: there's just a hole in the fence wide-enough to drive a truck through. Through that gate stands a two-story slab of decayed concrete with blacked-out windows, almost invisible against the black and starless sky. It's the aforementioned warehouse and nobody really remembers what was stored there in the past: it's not like the authorities keep much information on the things inside Ghost Town now that it's fallen to the monsters or the threat of them. All that anyone – just a few people – knows is its current contents.

Around them, there's more crumbling cement and rusting metal. Around them are empty tenement rows and _danchi_, rotting grocery stores and silent halls of commerce. In the distance, in the west, storm clouds are gathering, and they're swallowing the city in a greater darkness.

But the city's fighting back. Every now and then, there's a flash of light. There's a pinprick in the dark. Seconds later – maybe two at some points, maybe a full sixty for others – the dull rumbling of distant explosions reaches the two men. And as those clouds rise higher, as the explosions come more frequently, it becomes impossible to tell the thunder from the detonations.

"Think that there are any Dragons out there?" one of the two guards asks. He'd be considered almost formal if he wasn't so dusty and his suit fit him a little better. He's a big guy – not a disciplined one, but a powerful one – and his arms strain the fabric of his sleeves while his gut bulges out over his belt. He cradles a rifle in his arms, and it may as well be a toy under his hammy fists. His finger's on the trigger, and he's ready to shoot the first thing that moves because the stillness is unbearable and you never know when one of those monsters is going to pop up in front of you.

His companion scoffs at this. He's a man of approximately the same proportions and differentiated mostly by cut-off sleeves revealing tattoos of _oni _masks on one bicep and severed heads on the other. Shaking his head derisively, he tells the man in the full suit, "Tigers at best. You'd be seeing mushroom clouds if there were any Demons out there. _Dragons?_ Forget about it."

Suit – and that's what we'll call the first man – stares out into the distance. He keeps quiet for a few moments, waiting, just _waiting_ for a blinding flash of light to herald the arrival of a mushroom cloud. That's how things tend to go when you tempt fate: I throw something appropriate your way.

But there's no mushroom cloud. At least, none worth speaking of. Just more explosions rendered little by distance, more pinpricks of light, and more thunder.

"Gotta admit," Suit finally manages to say, "I kinda want to see a Dragon."

"You would," Tattoo tells him. He readjusts the strap of his rifle to sit a little more comfortably over his shoulder. "Because you're a sadist."

"Hah!" Suit barks. "_Hah!_ And you with an _oni_-mask tattoo..."

Tattoo smirks. Some languages use words. Others use pictures. Surely you know of hieroglyphs: the pictographic writing systems of long-dead cultures. Some fade away entirely, while others morph into lines and circles utterly unrecognizable as the things they once represented. The same goes for prison tattoos: each culture and country has its own language around the images used. In some, a number of skulls represents the number of people that a prisoner's killed, while in others it's a sign of respect for one's ancestors. Every thorn on a vine coiling around an arm may symbolize a year served behind bars. The _oni-_mask – the demon-face – symbolizes in this context the enforcement of a code. Considering the line of work that these men find themselves in, you can probably imagine what form enforcement takes. And decapitated heads? Well... I'll let you imagine what those symbolize. It's more pleasant that way.

Suit glances behind him. Nothing's really changed since he's looked at the warehouse, but there's just this constant activity going on within. Before they sent him out on guard duty and probably to get rained on, everybody was in a hurry and huff about something. There's a lot of anxiety there and he can hear it even out here.

"So, what do you think is going on?" Suit asks.

Tattoo shrugs and readjusts the rifle again. "Maybe it's just another drill."

There's this curt edge to his voice. It's like it's a topic that he doesn't want to talk about, and Suit can get where he's coming from. The bosses at the top are always jittery, always barking about preparing and being on alert. Once, they had an unannounced drill where the big boss sent a man into the warehouse to see if everyone was on their toes. The man got shot because that's what happens when you break into a criminal hideout, a bunch of people got sacked – that's tied up in a hemp bag and thrown into the river, just so you know – and nobody's done a drill since. Still, you never know.

"Say," Tattoo whispers. "You seen that new VT-16?"

Suit nods his head slowly and deliberately. "Yeah, some of the other guys were telling me about it."

"They say it's..." Tattoo pauses, trying to find something to add. It's his topic, he shouldn't flake out now. But he's got nothing, so he just trails off with, "... it's quite a thing to see..."

A moment of silence.

Suit opens his mouth to say something.

Instead of words coming out, about 80 Newtons of force and his front teeth force their way in. The method of delivery is a series of fiberglass and aluminum tubes welded and riveted together in the shape of a chain-driven, man-powered vehicle. It doesn't burn fossil fuel, is very eco-friendly, and comes in every color and pattern that you can imagine. This one's dark green, charred almost completely black from orbital reentry, and now sports a fresh red paintjob over the point of impact. Suit goes down, and he goes down _hard_.

Tattoo flinches. He takes a solid three seconds to come to grips with what just happened. The truth hits him like a madman in a green helmet: someone just threw a bicycle square at his friend's face.

But he doesn't have three seconds. Two and a half seconds after Suit goes down, a madman in a green helmet hits him like the truth.

Mumen Rider barrels into him without a word, without a warning. Under the low rumbling, Mumen Rider enters the scene at a sprint and carries Tattoo off his feet. The big man's easily got twice Mumen Rider's mass, but Mumen Rider's got two things going for him. The first, most important thing is the element of surprise: this is a given. The second is that he's no slouch when it comes to physical fitness. It comes from biking around a city several times a day, fatigue be damned. He's been in a scrap or six hundred, and he knows exactly how to hit a man to take him down.

"What was...?!" Tattoo manages before slamming into the ground with tremendous force and getting the wind knocked out of him. Finally, _finally _Tattoo starts reacting appropriately to this development. The two of them scramble. Tattoo wants to get to his feet. Mumen Rider wants him to do literally anything else for one simple reason: the gun. The big man's still got it slung over his shoulder, and there's not much that Mumen Rider can do if he gets enough space to swing it around. That's the whole reason why he sent the bike careening into the trigger-happy man with the intact suit! That gun presents a serious problem... and, possibly, a solution.

"Help!" Tattoo yells, forcing his way out of the mad tangle of limbs with his tremendous strength. "Intruder! Sound theaaaACKL!"

The rifle's slung over Tattoo's shoulder and, to be honest, that's not far away from the neck. Mumen Rider may be physically disadvantaged right now, but that's a string that he's going to pull on for all it's worth. He thanks his old wrestling coach for that personal demonstration on what being choked out feels like and relays the experience to Tattoo, gripping the rifle strap hard and turning it into a makeshift garrote. He loops it around the man's throat and pulls.

_Hard._

"_Gkh...!"_ the big man chokes out. He grasps for the strap, trying to pull it loose, but the thing won't budge: he hasn't even gotten a look at his attacker, but it's like fighting a demon! _"Gkerhg! Ccckrrkkkkkkkt!"_

"Black out..." Mumen Rider growls. "Come on already, _black out!_"

But it's not going to be that easy. Nothing in life ever is, especially for Mumen Rider. If Tattoo's going down, then he's going to make a fight of it. He forces his way to his feet and rears up to his full height. He throws his shoulders forward and the beast of a man actually lifts Mumen Rider from the ground!

The Cyclist For Justice's feet dangle and kick and the man actually supports his full weight on his trachea and he _doesn't go down._ For a terrible moment, Mumen Rider feels himself pulling forward. Impossibly, despite the weight of a struggling man on his throat, the sentinel actually musters enough strength to give himself some slack. If he gets free, then the game's over before it's even begun. Mumen Rider can't win in a straight fight and he knows it. He's going to have to drag Tattoo down to his level and he's got to do it fast.

"No you don't!" Mumen Rider mutters as his foe takes in a solid, hoarse breath. "_No you freaking don't!_ You might've done all the curls and bench presses in the world, _but every day of my life is leg day!"_

Mumen Rider kicks up and plants his feet firmly on the man's back, and then he extends them as hard as he can. The legs hold the strongest muscles in the body and, it turns out, Mumen Rider's legs are stronger than Tattoo's arms. He fights that agony in his busted foot just as much as he fights the big man and the strap digs into Tattoo's throat and it's back to that awful choking sound before either one of them notices.

Tattoo falls to his knees. He hits hard and Mumen Rider thinks that he hears something crack as bone strikes naked concrete. He doesn't have much time to think about it. Tattoo pitches backward and slams Mumen Rider against the ground. Helmet or not, Mumen Rider sees stars. He almost loses his grip and Tattoo windmills his shoulders and plants his feet in the concrete, trying anything he can to break Mumen Rider's hold.

Mumen Rider tries to say something. He tries to muster up some witty one-liner, some angry insult, _something._ All that comes out are these wet animal snarls and a clicking, choking noise in the back of his throat. This isn't a fight anymore. This is a struggle for survival. He feels sick about it. Sick that he's choking a man half to death and sick that he's engaging in this wretched violence, but he's in too deep now and he's got to do this quick and quiet or he's done all of this for nothing. _Lives are on the line._

There's a whole lot of bucking. There're a great many feral sounds. There're innumerable tears. There's a little bleeding. There's a whole lot to regret when it's done.

Tattoo's limbs go slack. Not all at once, no. To the last, even as his legs give out and all of his weight's resting on Mumen Rider's feet, he's clawing at that strap, struggling for freedom. His fingers fail one-by-one and he's not struggling against a man anymore. He just struggles for air. Air, air, air: that vital life-giving thing that you only notice by its absence. The pressure denies it to him. Mumen Rider feels him sobbing more than he hears it and he's glad, so glad, that he can't see the man's face. What nightmares would await him there? What curses or regrets are playing across the bulging eyes before he finally gives in to the darkness?

The man finally spends the last of his strength and there's no more movement out of him. No struggling. No twitching. Nothing of note. Just this dead weight pressing down on Mumen Rider.

_No, no, no_, Mumen Rider thinks, letting go of the rifle and letting the man drop. He's on top of him in a moment, silently mouthing the words over and over again. He presses his ear against the man's chest and listens, praying that he hasn't gone too far.

_Thmp thump! Thmp-thmp!_

Mumen Rider sighs in relief. He's a servant of life and justice, not a murderer, and he couldn't live with himself if he crossed that line. He doesn't know how Saitama, Genos, and the others cope with it. Over hundreds of fights, after getting his face bashed in dozens of times, after breaking innumerable bones, he still can't find it in himself to end a life.

Shaky from pain and ramped-up nerves, he looks around himself. Aside from the two unconscious men on the ground, nothing important has changed. No alarms have been raised and nobody's stormed out of the warehouse to attack him. It feels like the fight went on forever, but it couldn't have been more than thirty seconds. The thunder's getting closer now, and what little sound they've made was hidden under its rumbling.

The clock's ticking. The hourglass is draining. Time. More than ever, time is of the essence. Now that he's struck, he's got to press on. Every moment spent is a moment closer to detection. He's got no idea when the guards will come around or their presence will be missed, and he can't take anything for granted. All that he can do is drag them, their weapons, and his bike away from the gate and dump them in the darkness. Sure, it'll be suspicious when somebody finds the post abandoned, but it'll be better than finding the bodies.

"Justice Crash," he tells Suit as he pulls the first man out of the light. He's overflowing with adrenaline and that gives him strength but, even so, he's dealing with a very big man, a lot of wounds opening up, and a broken foot. It takes a lot out of him to haul that carcass a solid ten meters away, under the eaves of an abandoned cell phone store.

"J-Justice _Tackle,_" he mutters as he pulls Tattoo after his fellow."B-because... I didn't s-say it... huff... _huuuuuuff... _before...!"

He takes about two steps towards the compound and freezes. He turns back around, snatches up the guns, releases the magazines and ejects the chambered bullets, and waits five seconds after a flash of lightning before smashing the weapons against the brick façade. The thunder disguises the shattering, groaning sounds and that's two less things to worry about. Panting, he points down at the weapons and tells them, "And Just... Justice Sm... _huff... _Justice... _huff... _Just... just stay down… all of you... _huff_..."

He turns their pockets inside-out and empties their contents onto the concrete. Coins, cell phones, walkie-talkies... he takes a moment and gathers them all up into a bag stowed in his bike. It's stealing, yeah, and that's a felony, but anything that he can bring to the police will probably help them shut the operation down. There are so many fingerprints on those things, and people spill so much personal information to their cell phones. Oh yeah, the authorities are going to have a field day over these! But what really gets him excited is the key ring that he picks out of Suit's pockets. He looks back behind himself and smiles. This one in particular opens up so many possibilities...

"One step at a time," he tells himself. Transportation comes later. Right now, he's got to deal with infiltration. And for that, he needs weapons. Not guns: those are loud and clunky things and, if he has to rely on those, then he's pretty well screwed anyways. No, he goes back to the bike basket and pulls out his banged-up tire iron and a pair of bolt cutters. Hardly as effective as a katana with a blade sharpened to a single atom like Atomic Samurai's, but they'll do.

He swipes Suit's jacket and slings it over his shoulder on a whim. Preparations complete, ready as he'll ever be, he stalks off into the compound as a thief in the night.

**^V^V^V^**

Minutes pass. Not many, but Mumen Rider's uncomfortably aware of the passage of time. He did a good deal of scouting before heading on in, sneaking around the fence, but things look a lot different from the inside. From the outside, it looked small. From the inside... well, maybe it's just his proximity to danger, but there's a frightening amount of ground to cover.

The fences are all at least ten meters from the warehouse and you could fit a football field out back. It's where the receiving docks once were, back before someone boarded the garage doors. The big, open spot's been converted to a parking lot and, while there aren't a whole lot of cars there, there are enough. Fifteen cars, figure one driver and passenger apiece, and you've got a lot of people to fight through. Mumen Rider had a hard time with two of them, and he had the element of surprise there. His goal, then, is a simple one: don't get seen. As much as it runs contrary to his nature, he has to do things slowly and carefully.

"Come on," he whispers under his breath with the keys in hand. One-by-one, the Cyclist For Justice slips each key on the ring into every lock in the lot and does a little number on the wheels of the ones that don't pan out. He could solve the problem by hitting a button on the fob, but he's got no way of knowing if the appropriate car is going to make a noise. For all he knows, even if it doesn't, someone may notice the lights flashing.

One car, two cars. Red car, blue car. Black car, blue car. Old car, young car. This one has a little star. This one is a little car. Say! What a lot of cars there are! Mumen Rider works down three rows of cars and tries every single one. Of course he does. It's always the last one that you'd think to check that turns out to be the one you're looking for, isn't it? Cars, pockets, drawers... name it, whatever you're looking for is always going to be the one that you leave for last. Mumen Rider leaves the big van with the tinted windows for last in the utter certainty that it can't be the one he's looking for because that would be too convenient.

"Dang it," Mumen Rider says, pounding his fist against the roof when the key turns. "Blast... dang it all... because _of course..._ I could've saved ten minutes, couldn't I?"

He opens up the driver door and peers inside. It's not the nicest cabin he's ever seen, but he's silently grateful that there aren't any bloodstains inside. He's got no idea what crimes and sins have happened here and he doesn't want to think too much about it: that's what the police are for. Well, they're there for a lot of things. One of them is fingerprints. Another's collecting hair samples. In fact, this thing's pretty much a treasure trove of evidence on wheels. Forget the sack: he's going to have to break another couple of laws, but, if he can get this to the police...

_Bang!_

First impression? Gunshot. It's loud-enough! Mumen Rider dives inside for cover. Breathing hard, he waits for the next shot. Heart racing, he waits for a face to appear beside the window. Long seconds pass and neither of these things happen. Slowly, he raises his head and peers over the dashboard.

There's a fire-door next to the boarded-up garage doors, and a man stands there silhouetted against the light of the warehouse. Backlit like that, Mumen Rider can't see if he's got a gun or not. But he _can _see the little pinprick of light near his mouth, and he can make out a small cloud of smoke billowing up from it.

_Just enjoy your smoke, _Mumen Rider thinks. _Go ahead. Lung cancer's dropped from being the fourth-leading cause of death to the twentieth now that things like "Militant Cyborg" and "Angry Giant" are on the list. Go on, enjoy that smoke. You might as well because nobody lives long-enough to regret it anymore. Don't look my way. Blast, please look anywhere else. Please..._

Mumen Rider's not really worried about being spotted right now, but that's not why he's silently praying. He's not moving and there isn't anything to draw the smoker's attention to him. No, the problem's this feature that modern cars tend to have nowadays. When he opened the door, all of the interior lights turned on.

_And they haven't turned off._

Every car manufacturer's different, but almost all of them program their cars to keep the lights on for a set length of time. After all, if it's dark out, you want to be able to see where the ignition is. And it _is _dark out. So dark, in fact, that the low, soft lights of the van stick out like a remote lighthouse on a calm night.

As time goes on, the seconds seem to stretch longer and longer. The first ten seem to last a full minute. The next ten seem like half an hour. His nerves stretch to the breaking point and, for a second that seems like an hour, he contemplates trying to sneak out of the car and take the man by surprise. It's a foolhardy idea, but stress does strange things to logic and Mumen Rider fights to keep that self-destructive voice from overpowering him.

Finally, a minute that lasts three hours later, the lights dim. That's the dangerous time: the lights were always on as far as that one man was aware, but humans have predatory eyes and they're attracted to movement. The car doesn't move, but that shift in the light should grab his attention like a rabbit running across a field.

"...!" someone inside the building says, words muffled through the glass. Mumen Rider has no idea what it is, but it draws the man's attention inward at the crucial moment. He drops the cigarette, stomps it out, and heads back inside, slamming the door shut after him.

Mumen Rider sighs in relief, letting out a breath that he didn't know that he was holding. He takes the good news with the bad. Good news: he's still alive and nobody knows that he's here. Bad news: there are, apparently, at least a few people in very close proximity to his getaway vehicle. Wherever his targets are, he can't take them out through that near door: they've got to go the long way around the outside of the building.

"If I make it that far," he mutters. He shakes his head and tells himself, "Don't doubt yourself now, Tanaka. You've got to stay positive because someone has to!"

He slips the key into the ignition but doesn't turn it. After a moment's thought, he flicks the switch to just disable the interior lights: he got lucky this time, but there's no sense in leaving it to chance for the next. Then he drops off the bag with the watchmen's looted items in the passenger seat and slips outside once more. He closes the door, makes sure that it doesn't lock up after him, and sneaks off towards the warehouse.

Thankfully, there are a lot of doors and few of them are locked. Unfortunately, despite how much larger the warehouse seems up close, it also seems that the inside is about ten times smaller than the outside. He cracks open doors and, invariably, finds someone nearby. There are more people inside than he can handle alone, but there can't be enough people to fill the whole building! Yet they seem almost strategically positioned to notice him.

Three doors in, he sees it. He sees a lot of things, really, but what draws his gaze is chicken wire mounted between wooden posts, forming some kind of cage. Now, he can't see the contents from his position, but there can only be one reason why anybody abducting and selling children would have a cage.

He keeps the door open a little, presses his ear against the crack, and listens intently. At first, there are just these shuffling sounds, and the low talking of men who could be doing anything better with their lives. But then he hears something light and high-pitched: a sharp inhalation. Then he hears a quiet sob, and a whimper. They don't come from the same throat: he can't tell exactly how many of them there are, but there are multiple children inside the cage and they're all frightened. They're close. They're so close that it hurts...

And there's an armed man in the way.

He could ambush the man, sure, but conflict has to be his last recourse. True, he can only see one man from his vantage point, but it's the people that he knows are there but he _can't see _that worry him. His little reconnaissance tells him that there aren't many walls inside: anything that he does is going to be out in the open. If he fights one man, he's fighting all of them at once and he's not Saitama. He's not King, either. Blast, he's not even Tanktop Tiger! This whole endeavor would be a whole lot easier if everybody inside had an excuse to be somewhere else.

As luck would have it, red's a very powerful color. Whatever else you're looking at, your eyes will slide away from it and keep coming back to the red. That's why fire alarms are red: you should be able to find them in a hurry. After about six doors, he peeks inside and catches sight of one on an opposing wall close to two men playing a game of cards. He does a little mental cartography, figures out the best route, and slinks back around the building for the nearest appropriate door. He opens it, and...

"_Got you!" _a big, loud man screams. Mumen Rider actually falls from the shock and clutches his tire iron like a weapon, ready to defend himself.

"Not so fast!" another man shouts, and Mumen Rider's well and truly screwed and forces himself back to his feet. If he's going down then he's not doing it without a fight.

"In the name of-" he starts to roar, starts to open the door, but is cut off by the second man shouting, "You've activated my trap card! Crush Card Virus!"

_...what?_

That second man goes on to say, "When activated, all of your monsters with fifteen-hundred Attack or higher are immediately destroyed!"

"All of them?" the first man asks in disbelief, and Mumen Rider realizes that he's listening to those two men that he saw playing cards near the fire alarm. He quickly closes the door down to a crack and crouches waiting. His time will come. He just has to wait for the right opportunity...

"Yes," the second man says snidely. "All of them."

"That's broken as Hell," the first man says. "I don't think that's how it really works, because that's too powerful."

"Well, that's how Kaiba used it in the show," the second man says. "Yugi couldn't use any of his heavy hitters for the rest of the fight, so he had to-"

"Let me read the description," the first man says. "Unlike the anime, the actual _Duel Monsters_ has rules."

Voice rising, the second man says, "I'm telling you, it infects your deck! Your Summoned Skull is dead!"

A scuffle.

"... you look at your opponent's hand and all monsters they control," the first man says, voice monotonous as he reads. "And if you do, destroy the monsters among them with 1,500 or more Attack, then _your opponent_ can destroy _up to 3 monsters _with 1,500 or more Attack in their deck."

"...oh," the second man says. "That's... that's not as good."

"Sorry, Seto," the first man says. "You get the Summoned Skull, but not my entire deck. And-"

"Then I take it back!" the second man yells. "I instead play-"

"You can't take it back!" the first man roars. "Once it's been revealed, it-"

_**BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!**_

Both men cover their ears as the fire alarm blasts them point-blank. Everywhere, men flinch and shout, and there's this general bedlam everywhere.

"Who turned on the alarm?" someone somewhere in the warehouse asks. "Does anybody see smoke?"

"It's by the ammo dump!" a young brunette drowning in a suit jacket yells, waving his arms frantically. "By the receiving dock! Get out before it blows! Move it! Move it! For Blast's sake, get out! Anywhere but the dock! Get out! Get out!"

Almost everyone runs for the nearest exit and doesn't mind if they have to push someone under the metaphorical bus to be the first one out. There's a whole lot of cursing and shouting and not enough time for questions. It's going to be big and they've got to be somewhere else _now._

"Forget the cards!" the suited man screams, hauling that first man away from the table and almost throwing him out the door. "Your mother doesn't play card games in Hell! Get out!"

"But it's the _Shadow Realm...!"_

"Move!" the second man shouts, slapping that first man in the face. That also slaps some sense into him and the two gamers run outside like the Deep Sea King's nipping at their heels. The only ones left are the one who doesn't want to go and those who can't.

"Let us out!" a boy shouts. He's been stripped down to his underwear and you can see a network of scars and cuts crisscrossing his chest and stomach. He's not malnourished, but that's about all that he's got going for him.

"The fire!" screams a girl with short brown hair and a pustulous gash over her eye, beating the wire with fists rubbed raw by cords. Her, they left with nothing but a towel to preserve her dignity. "Don't let the fire get us!"

In all, there are five of them. Each one through cuts or scrapes, bruises or rashes displays marks of captivity on their barren bodies. It's not worth describing the fine details: I imagine that you'd like to sleep tonight. It's just worth knowing the horrified look on the man's face as he steps in front of the cage, and that a part of him dies looking at them. And, simultaneously, a part of him is returned to life.

The children, despite their cries for help, step back. They take shelter in the far corners of the little cage, trying to hide from him and that awful look on sunken brown eyes ringed with bruises. Nothing good ever comes from one of the adults approaching, and it's enough to overwhelm their fears of a fiery death.

One girl shrieks more than the others and tries to hide. You can imagine that the captors didn't give them much, and the only thing that they have to hide behind is each other. Physically better off than half of the others, the rest deny her sanctuary. They throw her away from the huddling group and she's left staring at a lean, bandaged man in a suit coat who towers over her like a giant.

"Tomoe?" the man asks, and the voice isn't harsh or unkind. "Mitsubishi Tomoe?"

She looks up at him with deep, brown eyes that glisten and search. The dirt and grime do little to dull the brilliant alabaster of her face, framed by messy brunette strands. The two lock gazes, and the girl's overcome by this curious sensation that they've met before. She doesn't really remember that face, but that voice...

"I've been looking for you," he says, sliding a pair of goggles over corrective lenses. "And so has your family.

"M-Mumen Rider?" the girl asks. _"Mumen Rider?"_

"Everyone goes home," he says. She can't see his eyes under the tinted glass and low light but she can tell that he's looking at everyone else, trying to put faces to names. "You're safe now."

"The fire!" Tomoe shouts. "What about the...?"

Her words trail off at the sight of a smirk crawling across his face. Just loud-enough to be heard over the alarm, says, "No fire! I just acted like I knew what I was talking about and everyone bought it! Now hold on, I'll get you out!"

The door's held shut by a padlock and, while he doesn't have the intended key, bolt cutters open a lot of doors for you. At least, the ones that the business ends can fit around and let's be honest: nobody thought that they'd need more than a centimeter of steel to hold back a few kids. Speaking of which...

"Is there anyone else?" Mumen Rider asks as he starts working the lock. He's tired and hurt and he's got to put a lot of weight into it, but now he's properly motivated and the shears bite in and begin their work. "Did they get anyone else?"

"No!" two of the children answer. The other three say, "Yes!"

Mumen Rider stops and stares, taken aback.

The others are closer to the door now that they think that the danger's passed. One of them – a little boy whose ribs show through a thin and torn shirt – says, "Th-there were three with m-me when I got here... everyo-o-one else got taken a-away. Everyone else c-came after."

"When?" Mumen Rider asks, feeling hollow and angry and sad all at once. He doesn't even feel the sudden release of tension as the tool finishes pushing through metal. "How long did I miss them by? How...?"

But he _does _feel something cold and hard pressing against the back of his neck.

"Damn it," Mumen Rider curses. "Blast, damn it..."

"And I just realized that I have no idea who you are!" Seto says. "Back away from the cage and put your hands where I can see them!"

The Cyclist For Justice doesn't obey at first. He's held frozen by three warring forces: internal, physical, and, he thinks, spiritual.

_I don't want to die, _Mumen Rider thinks. _I've faced death a thousand times and, no matter how much I resigned myself to it, I never wanted to die. I love life. And I can't serve life if I'm dead. Damn it... they've never had me dead to rights like this before. There is no cavalry: __**I'm **__the cavalry and I blew it! I've got to give in just this once. I'll find a way to turn this around. I always do._

It's not cowardice. It's human. I imagine that, if you had a gun to your neck, you'd also have a moment of doubt. Courage isn't the absence of fear, but the will to overcome it. And he's helped in this by a pair of dazzling brown eyes that stare upwards into his. Wet eyes, desperate eyes. Eyes that have haunted him all day and night. Eyes that will haunt him for the rest of his life if he doesn't do something drastic. Eyes that nobody will ever see again if he gives in now.

And despite the filth and impurity, despite the walls, a cool wind blows through his hair. A cool wind fresh with the scent of flowers. Fresh with _cherry blossoms_: the symbol of mortality. Unlike Moritsu, Mumen Rider's thought long and hard on their meaning. He can't help it: I've thrown enough of them his way over these last few days.

Everything dies eventually and it's up to you to give your death meaning. Believe me: the universe doesn't provide one to you. A death in a warm bed, surrounded by friends and family, can have less meaning than one alone in a gutter if you regret it. Tomoe and the others could die here if he does nothing, _and the universe wouldn't care_. The world would keep spinning, and Mumen Rider might get a few more minutes or even days out of it by giving in. He loves life, and he desperately wants more of it.

"But what kind of life would that be?" Mumen Rider asks, not moving from his spot. "What kind of man would I be?"

"_What?"_ Seto asks. "What the hell are you talking about?!"

Mumen Rider hesitates.

"_I said-!"_

Seto's so confused and irritated that he doesn't see Mumen Rider's move coming. He's also never seen the bolt cutters, which Mumen Rider hid with his body. Mumen Rider whirls around like a hurricane and plunges the tips into the man's shoulder hard, hard, _hard _and puts all of his weight into it. Mumen Rider's body feels like it's on fire and his broken foot's screaming in protest and his skin's trying to rip itself free and his eyes are watering and his throat's dry and his arms feel like lead and his nerves stab him from within and everything in his body fights back against it but his guilt and determination hits back harder, harder, _harder!_

"I'm Mumen Rider!" the man with the goggles shouts over the alarm. He lunges towards his foe, screaming, "And I'm here to stop you!"

Seto screams. His wordless cry is drowned out by this roar like thunder and there's a blinding flash of light. Mumen Rider feels something powerful reverberate through him but ignores it. There's blood on his hands and he loses his grip on the bolt cutters. That's okay, though. Really, it is. He doesn't want to stab the man twice. No matter how much a voice in his head tells him to finish this quickly, he's not a killer. He loves life too much to take it from someone else. Those bloody fists of his will have to do the job on their own.

Mumen Rider takes the man down. The two crash into the floor in a mess of entangled limbs, but this isn't like outside. Mumen Rider doesn't have the element of surprise, but the man's almost as thin and wiry as he is: this is a level playing field if ever there was one. After all, he just gave the man a big, open wound in the shoulder, and he himself is covered in dozens of little ones! Fair trade, right?

"I'm going to make sure that everybody gets out of here alive!" Mumen Rider shouts. He's still entangled and can't get to his feet, but he _can _drop an elbow on the man's gut. There's a loud, bloody rush of air as the wind's knocked out of him. _"Even if I have to die doing it!"_

"You stupid, son of a...!" Seto screams, words trailing off into an animal roar. He hauls off and slugs Mumen Rider in the jaw, sending the Cyclist For Justice sprawling flat on his back. Thinking only of the blow, Seto doesn't think about recovery and loses his balance, belly-flopping onto cold concrete.

_Get up! _Mumen Rider screams inside his head. _Get up! Get up, Tanaka! Get up!_

His insides shift like razor-glass and his bones creak in protest, but Mumen Rider hasn't gotten this far by giving into pain. He rolls over onto his stomach, pushes off, and lunges, never bothering to get back to his feet. Seto's still got a grip on his handgun and, if he gets the space, he's going to use it and end this a lot faster than Mumen Rider's ready to let him.

"Everybody gets out alive!" Mumen Rider shouts, driving a right cross into the back of the man's head. _"Everyone lives!"_

Seto screams and spits and tries to drive an elbow back into Mumen Rider's face. This time, Mumen Rider's ready for it. He deflects the blow with a short chop and traps the proffered limb between his shaking hands. With a herculean effort, he wrenches that arm back and slams it into the concrete floor, and that sends waves of agony up and down the man's arm. Seto howls in pain, and there goes the gun skittering across the floor.

Mumen Rider's no stranger to pain. They're old friends by this point, they practically dated in middle school, and he calls it for a favor. The man's stunned for a moment, so Mumen Rider uses the opportunity to drag him over onto his back. On one hand, that gives Seto clear avenues to strike him with all of his limbs. On the other hand, that gives Mumen Rider a clear shot at the stab-wound in the man's shoulder.

"_Everyone lives!"_ Mumen Rider screams, sending blow after blow into the gash. He's trying to say something else, something about justice and duty and fate, but the words won't come. Something deep inside of him clings to those two words like a mantra, or a ward against defeat, or an affirmation of his goal, or _something_. Over and over again, punch after punch, _"Everyone lives! Everyone lives! Everyone lives!" _

There comes a point where Mumen Rider realizes that his opponent isn't retaliating and he's just breaking bones. He doesn't know how long ago Seto gave up the fight or how long ago he passed out: he just knows that the man's shoulder is a bloody mess and his eyes are closed and Mumen Rider's breathing hard and the children are whimpering.

Mumen Rider just kneels there, straddling his victim, staring at him in silence. He presses a pair of bloody fingers against the man's jugular and feels his heartbeat. It's a relief. Because, as Mumen Rider says again, "Everyone lives." _Even the ones who don't deserve to._

And then excruciation.

Hopped up on adrenaline, so consumed with the fight, he didn't even know that it was there. As the fight leaves him, as the red clears from his vision, a pain unlike any other flares out from his gut and instantly consumes everything that there is of Mumen Rider. He screams and falls face-first onto the downed kidnapper, cursing and wailing, clutching his stomach. Even through his gauntlets, he can feel something pumping out. He can feel the heat, smell the iron, and he can feel... Blast, he can feel so much _pain!_

He rolls over onto his side and off the criminal and pulls his hands free, and he stares down at his stomach in horror. He wasn't fast-enough. He wasn't strong-enough. He got in a good first strike, but he didn't end it in one punch. If he was Bang, or Darkshine, or... Blast! If he had any power at all, he could've done it! The flash, the bang, the impact... he never knew that Seto got a shot off until it was too late!

Red blood and yellow bile and every kind of hideousness all ooze out from the wound and the bullet worms its way through his insides. It's just about the worst place that you can get shot: one to the chest or head may drop you instantly, but there are so many organs all bunched up in the abdomen that you're not going to last long unless you get to a really good doctor really quickly. It's not even the organ failure that's going to get him: the bullet passed through so many blood vessels that he's got seconds, maybe minutes before he goes into shock.

_I'm dead, _he tells himself. _I'm dead. I just haven't noticed it yet! I'm dead!_

"Not yet," I tell him, brushing sweaty bangs from his face. "It's not over yet."

He looks up. The sound's dropped away until nothing remains but his ragged breaths. A couple of meters away, a world away, five children press around him.

The girl – the one with the wide eyes, the one with the towel, the one he came for – presses her hands against his shoulder. She's telling him, "Get up, Mr. Rider. Get up...!"

He looks down. His body's there amongst a spreading pool of red and yellow and black. He stands beside himself in pain, watching what's at stake. His life, the children... they're all gone unless he does something.

Something lands in the middle of the morbid puddle. Something soft and pink-white. Something too familiar by this point. Something that the children can't see. Something that the body he left behind is too wracked with pain to notice. Another falls beside it. And another, and another. The air's filled with cherry blossoms and that cool wind heavy with the freshness of brook-water. Now given something else to focus on, he looks upwind at the source.

What confronts him is a denuded tree. It was full before, and the blossoms seemed endless. Now, though? Now it's skeletal. Every blast of that cool wind blows more of its cherry blossoms away. Before his eyes, the petals are vanishing.

"Will there be another spring?" I ask him from the shadows and the wind. "Will the cherries bloom again, or is this the death of the tree?"

Mumen Rider shakes his head.

"It doesn't matter," he says tiredly. He turns away from the tree and walks the infinite, short distance to his body. As he fades from my dying world, he tells me, "The last leaf hasn't fallen yet."

**^V^V^V^**

"Up," Mumen Rider tells himself, forcing a hand to the ground. "Up... uuuuuup...!"

He fights the pain like he fights everything else. He can't defeat it, but he struggles against it all the same. Tearing things, burning things dance through his insides and tears stream from his eyes. With his current arrangement, that's a problem: he can't see worth a damn with his goggles trapping moisture. Mumen Rider rips them off with his free hand and almost gets to his feet.

"...!"

It's... he doesn't know what it is. He just hears _something._ Something's making a noise out there beyond the draining rapids of blood flowing through his temples. This faint impression of sound drags his attention to the little body looking up at him in fear and alarm, trying to support his weight and take the pressure from his legs. Mumen Rider looks about himself and sees the other children. Sometime since the fight, they let themselves out of the cage. He'd cut open the lock, so he guesses that fear was all that held them back until now. Until...

No, no... they've been out for some time, now. They were crowding around him a moment ago. He'd seen it from afar, from that black and flowery place. Where was that? Was that a nightmare? A vision? A view from the other side of mortality?

"Doesn't matter," he says hollowly and he doesn't know if the children hear him. He doesn't know if he's making any sense to them. He just stumbles forward in a way that can be mistaken for walking. He grabs hold of Tomoe's hand and pulls her after him. She says something and he's got no idea what the words are but she gets the sentiment. The others, too. The others follow after.

"This way," he tells them, heading for the door closest to the parking lot. "This way..."

He tries to open the door, but his hands are slippery from blood they just slide off the metal and he can't feel the tips of his fingers and that's not good and he can't get a grip on the doorknob and one of the kids gets it for him and he probably says something but he can't find the words and everything's a big mess of pain and white noise rushing through his mind and everything's getting blurry and

_Focus, _he tells himself. _Focus. Don't quit now. You've got a long road ahead of you and the job's not done._

He looks around outside. Despite the pain and fear, something at least's gone right: the parking lot's abandoned. Convinced that the ammo dump right by that door was going to blow up, they all headed in the opposite direction. He's still got to worry about passing everyone on the way out, but that sort of problem tends to take care of itself once you're safely entombed behind a few tons of rolling steel and glass.

He leads them outside through the first droplets of rain and rumblings of thunder. He fumbles it a few times, but he manages to pry open the rear door and stammer. "G-g-get in! We don't have l-long!"

One, two, three, four of the captives get in the back. All that's left is Tomoe. He can't figure out why at first, but then he realizes that it's not for lack of trying. She's trying to get in, but he's got a death-grip on her hand and all the blood in the world isn't going to loosen his hold. Only he can do that.

"...?"

"I-in you go," he tells her. He hoists her up and pries his fingers loose, biting his lip to stifle a cry of pain as muscles shift and stretch over ruptured vitals. He slams the door shut and barely even feels the impact. It's dark out, but that's no excuse for how dark things are getting. It's like he's looking at everything, _listening _to everything from the end of a long tunnel, and it's growing longer by the second. The seconds drag him further away from the world he knows, back to that black and soundless place with the maiden by the tree...

And then, light.

Like a flood, it drowns the parking lot and blots out everything else. Mumen Rider flinches. He raises his hand against it and shades his eyes, and he tries to make sense of his surroundings.

There are lights attached to the fence posts. There are lights mounted on the exterior walls of the warehouse. They've all been turned on and it might as well be daylight. And he's lit up like a bonfire for an awful lot of people with rifles to shoot at. They're just silhouettes, mere suggestions of shapes behind flashlights, but the light glitters and sparkles off of the long barrels of assault rifles.

_You know, _he thinks, _flushing them out towards the front gate probably wasn't a smart idea. It's not like it takes long to spot blood on the concrete..._

"Get on your knees!" some of the men shout loud-enough to overpower that thunder in his ears. Others, "Surrender!" Or, "Stay where you are!"

They're closing the distance. The lights of their electric torches are approaching. He can almost see their faces through a thickening field of rain. He can almost smell the cordite, hear the thundering of their hearts. Perched between life and death, he can almost notice a lot of things. But despite that, facing down an advancing firing squad, only one thought really crosses his mind.

The key's already in the ignition.

He flings open the driver door and the world erupts in gunfire. The air's alive with the sound of bullets whipping past, striking metal and shattering glass. He's fast, but he's a snail beside so much flying lead. One bullet passes through the now-missing window and slams home into Mumen Rider's shoulder with so much force that it nearly topples him. Another punches clean through the sheet metal and fiberglass door and pegs him in the leg just under the pelvis, shattering bone and making a merry ruin of a pretty important artery. Mumen Rider goes down. Mumen Rider goes down _hard._

Face against the blacktop, his left glasses lens cracked, Mumen Rider doesn't know where he is or what he's doing. For a moment, he doesn't even know _who_ he is. He doesn't know why the raindrops pound him like hammers. He doesn't understand why the blossom in the puddle of water and blood remains dry and white. He can't bring himself to remember why he's hurting so much. He just knows what he has to do.

_You'll hate yourself forever if you give up, _Mumen Rider tells himself. _You don't give up, Tanaka. Mumen Rider doesn't give up. Your body gives up, __**but Mumen Rider doesn't.**_

The thunder is closer now. The thunder's practically overtaken him. The thunder of the storm clouds, the thunder of the rifles, the thunder of the footsteps, the thunder of the river, the thunder of the petals falling. The thunder of his heart overwhelms them, pumping out blood in scorn and defiance. With every last iota of strength left in him, Mumen Rider pushes himself up onto what passes for his good leg and dives into the driver's compartment. Bloody, numb, shivering hands seek out and wrench the key sideways, sending the engine roaring into life. That big, powerful hunk of steel... the windows shatter and the van's skin shreds, but the engine block's solid metal and the bullets don't do a damn thing against it. For now, he's got a shield. For now, he's got an illusion of safety. For now...

"Hold onto something!" Mumen Rider screams, hoping that the children in the cargo compartment can hear him over the rain and storm and bullets. He doesn't have a good foot anymore, but he puts the car into gear and stomps one of them on the gas pedal and off he goes. The van races forward and Mumen Rider fights the wheel just as violently as he fights that darkness clawing at his consciousness. The former wants to drag him right into a fence, the latter down to the abyss. His arm and feet burn and ache and scream and the rainwater slaps him through the broken windshield but he keeps the vehicle on target and barrels towards the advancing lights and the shadowed forms behind them.

"Move," he mumbles with a bloody mouth. "Move, move, move..."

It's all happening so fast. He had to ditch the distinctive helmet so that everyone would buy his fire alarm bluff and nobody saw his brown pads under the stolen jacket. Nobody knows that that was Mumen Rider, and none of them know that it's him behind the wheel. Nobody knows that the most reluctant killer of the Hero Association is driving. There isn't a soul on the planet who knows that he'll lose this game of chicken if they hold out long-enough: the criminals just see a madman sending two tons of vehicular homicide their way.

They scatter. They send a few dozen more bullets his way, but they scatter all the same. Some step out of the way and others dive. Safety's when nothing happens, and Mumen Rider, for all of his pain and misfortune, is very glad for that. The van barrels on, clipping a fence post as it clears the gate and accelerates into the night. At first, nobody does anything. They watch him vanish into a thickening sheet of rain and nobody knows what to say for an embarrassingly long time.

"After him!" someone who's probably someone important bellows. He points to the other cars in the lot and screams, _"Get after him!"_

They don't need to be told again. Slinging rifles over shoulders or dropping them where they stand, more than a score of men give up any thought of defending the warehouse and embark. The night's filled with engines screaming under the rushing storm, of tires screeching, and of voices crying out in anger and alarm. They kick their cars into gear and ride out.

They try, anyways.

Very quickly, the old sounds are drowned out under twisting metal and the sharp hisses of metal grating on metal. Most of them just never get a grip on the asphalt and barely move at all. Some cars get a meter or two before pitching forward like runners hamstrung at the starting line. A few drivers hear these loud snapping sounds and spin out. One pickup truck plows straight into the warehouse and brings down a torrent of bricks. One valiant sedan almost makes it to the gate before losing control and careening into the fence post, blocking the exit and going no further.

Confused, hurting, angry men step out of their metal deathtraps and inspect the damage. It takes them too long to figure out that someone stripped the lug nuts from a few wheels and gouged open the rest.

If you've got enough privacy, a tire iron, and some bolt cutters, I guess that you can spare a few minutes to make sure that nobody follows you.

**^V^V^V^**

There are more important things to focus on.

First, there are the three gaping holes stuck in him. The one in the gut that hurts more than you could possibly believe, the one in the shoulder that stings like the end of the world, and the one in his leg that he can't feel. That last one's the worst one. That's the one that's bleeding out faster than the others. That's the one that's actually going to kill him.

Second, there's the fact that nobody's answering his phone call. One bloody hand's on the wheel, and the other hand's pressing his cell phone against his ear. He can just barely make out the sound of an answering machine... honestly, that's a new one for him. He's never heard of a hospital being so overwhelmed that the nurses, the doctors, the receptionists... whoever the heck it is that answers the phone, whoever it is can't be spared. He doesn't remember if he's calling for the children in the back, or if he's calling for himself. It doesn't really matter, I guess.

Third, he can't really see anything. There's the darkness creeping in from around the edges of his vision, but what's really getting him right now is the rain. It's growing thicker by the moment. It would be difficult if the windshield wipers could do their jobs, but there's this little matter of the windshield being shot out. Plowing straight through sheets of precipitation, water splashes against his face and glasses and makes his job that much more difficult.

But none of that matters right now. It should because they're actual problems that hold dire consequences for him, but he can't bring himself to care because there's this one thought that just keeps pounding through his head, over and over, and he can't shake it.

_I'm breaking the law._

They took his license away years ago. He drove his motorcycle too fast and too often in pursuit of justice, so he started chasing it on a bicycle. Even if he _did _have his license back, it wouldn't apply here: motorcycles require their own license that doesn't cover sedans, vans, and the lot of them. He's breaking the law in so many ways just by sitting behind the wheel, to say nothing of his reckless driving and the unsecured children in the back. Maybe it's just because he's been so acclimated and resigned to death that the danger doesn't faze him anymore. He doesn't know. He just can't shake it. He doesn't have control over much of anything anymore.

Reality exerts a grim hold on him. Red's a powerful color, and that's why you tend to paint important things red. Like fire hydrants, for instance. Like the one coming up on the left. He tries to veer right to avoid it, but his arms aren't doing what he tells them to and that thing's coming at him devilishly fast.

"Hang on," he tries to shout back into the cargo compartment. It just comes out as a hoarse whisper and nobody can hear him. Thankfully, unlike Moritsu's sedan against the mailbox, the speeding van's got a little more oomph behind it. It plows into the hydrant with the sound of a giant's hammer striking an anvil and keeps going, and all that it has to show for it is a mangled undercarriage and a bent axle.

That's actually kind of important. Mumen Rider doesn't know exactly what happened, but he knows that something's wrong. Well, a lot of things are wrong. Between his injuries, the sluggishness of his limbs, and that fatigue beating his mind into submission, he's got no shortage of issues to work through. But a van suddenly putting up a fight is the straw that breaks the camel's back.

_You're going to kill them, _he tells himself. _You're going to kill them. You're going to kill them. If you keep this up, you're going to kill them. You've taken them as far as you can. They have to go on foot._

He tries to stop the car the conventional way. But his legs... well, his legs are a nightmare and he can't really feel them. He doesn't know if he's exerting any pressure on the brakes. The car just barrels forward, so he just pulls a foot off of the gas and lets the car coast. Slowly, too slowly to believe, the van comes almost to a halt. Close-enough to one that he can throw the parking brake into position so hard that he snaps off the knobby buttony thing on top clean off and not toss everyone around like Ping-Pong balls, anyway. He doesn't remember what it's called right now and he guesses that it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. Mumen Rider waits for

**^V^V^V^**

His eyes snap open. His breathing's shallow and fast and he looks around the driver's compartment like a caged animal. How long was he out? Hours? No, not hours. He'd be dead by now if that were true: the blood flow's too fast for that. Seconds. A minute, at most.

"G-get them out," he gasps, fumbling with the door. His hands – his slick hands, his ruined hands, his numb hands – slide over the metal as though greased. He can't get solid purchase. Mumen Rider's hourglass is spilling out sand and blood and he's wasting precious seconds on a little plastic lever.

Finally, it opens, and he's spilled out ont

**^V^V^V^**

"_Ghurkh!"_ Mumen Rider sputters, spitting out blood and rainwater as consciousness returns. He's staring down at concrete or asphalt or something horribly solid, and it doesn't take a genius to realize that he hit his head and passed out again.

"_Th-thank-k-k yyyou, he-helmet," _he tells nothing in particular. Especially not the helmet that he forgets he's not wearing anymore. _"O-otherwisssssse thatmight'veh-h-hurt..."_

_Nope, _he thinks. _Still hurts. Head still hurts. Everything hurts. My h_

**^V^V^V^**

"Wake up," a little girl tells him. He doesn't realize that he's hearing her at first. Everything's kind of quiet and faint and distant and he doesn't even know that there's anybody out there for a while. "Please, wake up!"

Mumen Rider's eyes open again almost of their own volition. Directly over him are the wet, wide, brown eyes of a vulnerable girl that he takes more time than he should to recognize as Tomoe, shaken and battered by a wild ride through the night and drenched to the bone. She's crying her eyes out, shaking him as hard as her little arms can, and she's not alone. The other four are all around, trying to drag him back from the land of the dead. But for all of their desperation, they lack the strength or means to bring him back for more than a few seconds. And Mumen Rider knows it.

And that's okay.

The sheets of rain and storm of petals pelt the lot of them, and it's so inviting and cool and refreshing. It's enough to make him forget the pain: so close to the end, the pain doesn't really mean anything to him anymore. He did everything in his power to do the right thing, and did more besides. He can let go. He can finally rest...

If not for those sad, frightened eyes...

"Hey," Mumen Rider says. The words come easier now that the pain's going away and he's just really, really tired. "Are you still with me, Mitsubishi Tomoe?"

As though from far away, her voice comes to him: "Don't die on me, Mumen Rider. You're my hero..."

The mask of pain is gone. All that remains is that calm and pleasant face that comes out whenever he deals with children. The face that he wears when pulling balloons from trees, or buying icy treats for delinquents.

"You'll do fine," he says after a long pause. "You'll do... fine..."

The pale face against the dark sky fades a little. The rain drops away. There's just this coldness that comes as a relief after two of the most brutally hot days on record. It's getting kind of hard to talk, or even to find the words. Everything's smothering under an increasingly-heavy blanket of sleepiness.

And through all that, he just barely feels something in his right hand. It's rectangular and hard. There's a term for it. He was trying to use it for something...

"Take it," he says, clumsily holding out the cellphone to Tomoe. A subjective lifetime later, she gets the idea and takes it off of his hands. He whispers, "Call..."

"I'll call an ambulance," the frightened girl says with renewed determination. "I'll get you a doctor! I'll...!"

He laughs a little. Not much or not very loud because it's hard to breathe, but Tomoe catches it. She looks at him in confusion as he places a hand over hers and says out his last.

"Your family... misses you... so much... Let them know... you're... s

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

**^V^V^V^**

**Author Notes**

_(Originally uploaded on Friday, July 5__th__, 2019)_

_(This chapter was edited and re-posted on Thursday, January 31st, 2020.)_

_To be concluded._

**^V^V^V^**

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.


	9. Epilogue Redux

The following is a non-profit fan-based story and the author is unaffiliated with ONE, Shueisha, or Viz Media, who own the rights to _One-Punch Man_. Please support the official releases.

**^V^V^V^**

**:: HUMAN EVIL ::**

**by**

**Seraph of Winters Past**

**^V^V^V^**

**Epilogue**

"**The Rider is Dead"**

To say that "Mumen Rider awakens in an unfamiliar place" is wrong in virtually every way that a statement can be wrong. But, until a human language develops to the point where it can adequately describe metaphysics and realms of existence beyond mortal experience, let's say that Mumen Rider awakens in an unfamiliar place. It'll hurt your head less, that way.

Insofar as he can be said to awaken in a place that's not a place, and to do so lying flat on his back, Mumen Rider comes to staring at the hot and whirling stars overhead. Comets streak across the heavens and galaxies pinwheel and blaze in their proscribed arcs. He's never seen a night sky so bright before: the light pollution of the cities he patrolled never let him see nature as it was intended and his eyes were always on the ground or distance. So, you can imagine that this is something of a revelation. Who knew that the sky could be so pretty?

It's just a small corner of the sky. He's sure that the rest of it would be equally glorious, but it's blocked out by a canopy of pink and white. Backlit by the starry night shedding enough light to read by, the translucent petals bob and dance in a cool sea-breeze.

Mumen Rider looks around himself. To his right, a forest of hill cherry trees in full bloom. To his left, ocean waves crashing against a cliff. Below him, cool grass blanketed in petals. Wherever he is, he feels a lot better than he did after being shot. Eyes flying open wide, he bolts upright and his hands race for his stomach. He sighs in relief when he doesn't find a hole and his hands come away dry.

"Blast, I'm glad that was a dream," he tells nobody in particular. He smirks, falls back against the ground in a spray of petals, and we laugh.

Now, I keep laughing, but Mumen Rider stops pretty suddenly. His eyes slowly slide over toward the edge of the cliff, and he finally realizes that he's not alone. There, in the starlight, he sees a young woman sitting against the trunk of a denuded tree. On some subconscious level, he knows that he's not really looking at one, but it's what he imagines when he sees me.

He likens me to a noblewoman of ancient times, like the woman in the woodcut from Tomoe's home. He sees silvery hair tinged blue, and eyes sparkling the pink of cherry blossoms in the dim light. My kimono's of the same color, and he half-expects to find cherry blossoms printed there: after all, that's been my main method of warning and encouraging him over a horrid day of blood and misery. Instead, he sees the blossoms of a peony bursting from a thin stem.

Metaphor... everything is metaphor here. His rides took him past many gardens, and he couldn't help but learn some horticulture along the way. The peony, the _botan_: the King of the Flowers. Surrounded by so many cherry blossoms, the fact that I wear the emblem of their ruler has to mean something to him even if he doesn't understand it yet.

But sure. Let's just say that he sees me giggling at a joke and leave it at that for now.

"What...?" he starts, coughs, clears his voice, and asks, "What's so funny?"

"It's just a song," I say lightly, shaking my head. "_Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream..._ I'm not laughing at you. It's just that you reminded me of something amusing."

"Alright, then," he says. He pushes himself to his feet and brushes off a few petals from his arms before walking over to me. "How long have you been here? Is this your garden?"

"Oh, it's everyone's garden," I tell him as the silent stars go by. "I just happen to exist here. I've been here a lot longer than you. I was there when you went to sleep, and I've been waiting a long time for you to wake up."

He tilts his head and stares at me for a little while. His eyebrows arch and his mouth tightens into a little "o" as recognition dawns on him.

"We've met, haven't we?" he asks. He points at me and shakes his hand a few times as the memories return, but this is Mumen Rider that we're talking about and he quits it when he realizes that some find pointing rude. "Sorry, I'm sorry. Just... you were there in the alley with the petals... and... you picked me up when I fell by all of those posters, didn't you?"

I snap my fingers with a smile and tell him, "Bingo. When you needed help, I lent a hand or gave you a little sign. It was the best that I could do, under the circumstances. I can't live where you came from for long."

He laughs and smiles, and it's one of those pure things that you don't see in these parts very often. He tells me, "You know who I am, but we haven't been formally introduced. I'm Mumen Rider, the Cyclist For Justice. I never knew my dad, but my mom named me Tanaka. Nobody calls me that anymore. I used to ride a motorcycle for my patrols until I lost my license, so everyone started calling me the Rider Without a License. Do you do handshakes here?"

It all comes out so fast and nervous that I can't help but smile a little even though I'm about to give him some bad news. I hate breaking it to people like him. They're always so sad after...

"We don't really do a whole lot of anything around here," I tell him, both nodding and shaking my head at the same time in an impossible gesture that he just rolls with. "But you can interpret it that way."

Mumen Rider extends his hand. I rise without standing and take it firmly, shaking.

"Who do I have the pleasure of meeting?" he asks.

He sees the long sigh and catches both the amusement and the sadness in it. I kind of shake my head and tell him, "I also have many names. But I'll be honest: you're the kind of person who'd accept my most recognizable one. I don't have to pretend to be someone else and hide it from you."

He tilts his head in a way and asks, "What would that be?"

I smile.

"Death."

Mumen Rider flinches, as much as he can without a real body, but he doesn't let go of my hand or break his smile. He just looks around himself – at the infinite garden of cherry blossoms, at the sea without end, at the dancing stars – and sighs.

"Life is but a dream..." he sings ruefully, the meaning sinking in. "I... I had a hunch that you were something like that. I don't know how, but..."

I flick him in the forehead. He doesn't feel pain, and he knows that it's not really what happens, but it's just a little imposition to draw him back to the moment. He stares down at me, perplexed, and meets my eyes again.

"It's because you've woken up," I tell him. "Everyone wakes up in the end."

"They call death the long sleep," he says, still coming to grips with the news. "And they wonder what dreams may come when we've shuffled off the mortal coil. And... I've been here before. Not... not _before _before, like you're saying, but... I..."

He turns me around to face the tree and points at it.

"That," he tells me. "I remember that. And I remember you sitting at its feet, like you were when I woke up just now! When the building fell on me! With that monster, and the Blond Bomber. I... I dreamed of this place!"

I shake my head and laugh a little, which makes him flinch as much as one can flinch without a real body or nerves to shake.

"No," I tell him. "No, you died."

"I died," he says in the most simple, matter-of-fact tone that you can imagine.

"You died," I tell him just as succinctly.

He ponders this for a moment during which a galaxy flares into life and burns out.

"Was I not good-enough for you?" he asks half-serious, and I bark out laughing from the absurdity of it. "Were you not entertained? Did you want to watch me suffer a little more before collecting for good? What, are you going to throw me back for your continued amusement? Is that what's going to happen now?"

"No," I snort. "No, no, no. You don't get it. I didn't throw you back. You saw Tomoe in desperate need of help, and you didn't let me stop you from going back. Mumen Rider, in his quest for justice, was too strong for Death to take."

"No," he tells me. "You pushed me back. I remember the wind and the cherry blossoms..."

"Nope," I say. "Well, yes, you remember the wind and flowers. But they're not what pulled you back. That was all you. I just guided you back when I saw that I couldn't get a hold of you."

He strongly fights the urge to let go of my hand, realizing only now that he never let me go.

"Oh, go ahead, you're already mine," I tell him, stifling laughter. He's been so courteous, and it just wouldn't be polite to mock him, would it? "But trust me. This time, I'm for keeps."

"The children!" he blurts, looking to the forest of cherry blossoms. "I've got to...!"

"You saved the children," I tell him, putting a hand on his shoulder. I turn him to face me and say, "You were crushed dead by a building. But, because you didn't know that Mitsubishi Tomoe would be safe, your burning drive to make things right let you come back to settle the matter."

The sea-breeze whips up the petals into a ring, showering us in pink and white.

"You pulled five children from my grasp," I tell him softly, despite my grip tightening like the end of the world. "You saved them from every kind of human evil. You got them out of harm's way. You're pretty sure that they'll find the help they need. And they will. Saitama is finishing what you started in Ghost Town, the police are kicking down doors across the city, and Blizzard and her gang are breaking what the police can't get."

My hands slip over his. He tightens his grip for comfort in a trying time. I squeeze back.

"Trust me, Mumen Rider," I tell him. "You've done everything that you can, and that tether to the life you knew has been broken."

"What now?" he asks as he accepts the inevitable. "What happens next?"

"You were the Sakura," I tell him. I guide his hands to the trunk of the barren hill cherry tree and say, "The cherry blossoms that burst into life, only to fall upon the careless soil. But sad though the end may be, your brief dance down gladdened me. Finally, someone appreciated the message of the flowers. Someone got the fact that things aren't worthless because they don't last forever. That's your legacy, Mumen Rider. You've taught a lot of people the lesson. And because of that..."

I pull his hand from his barren tree and place them against a sapling.

"Mitsubishi Tomoe..."

I guide him to a tree that's not much larger.

"Toshikawa Gorou..."

And another...

"Daihatsu Toshi..."

I gesture to the forest at large.

"The names may not mean much to you, but this should," I tell him. "All of these trees are lives you've saved. All of them lasting for a moment, but whose seeds will create new forests. All of them knowing the value of what you gave to save them. They owe you their lives, but there's only one thing that you can do for them now..."

There's a rumbling unlike any other, and Mumen Rider whirls around wide-eyed. He sees the foaming water and smells the salt-spray in the wind. He feels the ground shaking underfoot and tastes the loose soil in the air. And finally, finally he sees the waves crashing against the cliff. The briny water smashes rock, plows away soil, and rips his tree's roots from the ground. The tree teeters on the edge for a moment – a moment lasting a lifetime, but a moment nonetheless – and falls to the black tide.

"...get out of their way," I say softly. "Time erodes the ground from under everyone, but you can't put down roots again without claiming space that belongs to someone else."

"I..." Mumen Rider pauses. He tries to think of some argument against my words. Then he tries to think of something to say in agreement. Nothing comes when he approaches it from either direction. It's all just so big and sudden for him to handle. He finally settles on, "I don't know what to say..."

I take him by the arm and lead him to the shore. I've got a little boat waiting. Just big-enough for the two of us. Just strong enough to find the other end of the universe.

"You've got eternity to figure it out," I say. "But for now, it's time to rest. I'll row."

He stares down at the boat in silence for a long time. Then he nods his head: _I can't go back, but I can leave something behind_.

"She'll need this," he says, removing his helmet. After a moment, he pulls off his goggles as well. "This too. Safety first..."

He turns back the way he came and hurls them as hard as he can. The wind takes them, and they sail far beyond his reach.

**^V^V^V^**

It seems like everybody came to Mumen Rider's funeral.

Politicians, dignitaries, businessmen, teachers, children, firefighters, policemen, athletes... Mumen Rider touched a lot of lives, and they flooded the temple to pay their respects. Everyone knew someone that Mumen Rider saved. If they didn't, then they knew someone who knew someone who Mumen Rider had saved. Or, if not them, then... well, in a moment of black comedy, someone made a game of it: _Six Degrees of Mumen Rider._

The professional heroes liked to play the game, and there sure were a lot of them. Everyone from the lowly Class C that Mumen Rider championed all the way up to the demigods in Class S made appearances. The highlight of the event had to be Amai Mask singing a dirge for his fellow comrade in arms.

"He lost more fights than he won," the faceman of the Hero Association had said at the beginning of his set. "But he gave more to his cause than those more powerful than him dared, and in so doing he dignified heroes everywhere. He will forever be a paragon for others to hold themselves against. This next song is from my most recent album, available now for download through my website..."

Men and women. Boys and girls. Adults and children. Humans and demigods. But, when she got past all that, there was one group that _hadn't _shown up.

_Family._

Watanabe Tanaka, as it turns out Mumen Rider was born, didn't have much in the way of relatives. His father disappeared when he was only a month old and nobody knew who he was. His mother died in a car accident in his early teens. Aside from a single maternal aunt with dementia, nobody could find a branch in Mumen Rider's family tree worth pulling on. Journalists and talk show personalities had a field day with that, spitballing theories on how the young man's lack of a home-life and familial background might explain his rise to heroism.

And this mystery presents a unique problem. You see, we're well after the funeral now. We're well after the public grief, well after the talk shows, well after the benefit concerts and news cycles have finished with him. None of these things really take that long because there are always other things for the media to fixate on: things more immediately pressing. In the end, the Ministry of Health cared the longest because they had to deal with Mumen Rider's remains.

Legally, there has to be a witness. Whenever someone's cremated in City Z, there has to be someone present who can identify the body rolled into the furnace and verify that its name matches the one that'll go on the urn. Mumen Rider had a very distinctive face, even with that helmet and those goggles, but the preference was for someone who actually knew the victim to witness the event, and it was especially preferable for that someone to be a family member. But... well, we return to the problem. They held off on lighting the furnaces as long as they could, but the only family member left to witness the necessary evil has dementia and wouldn't recognize her nephew from a jar of peanut butter with a green lid. They know this because that's exactly what happened.

Mumen Rider faced death daily. It was a fact of life that he had to consider, and it turns out that he did so long ago. When the authorities looked through his apartment, they found his will and discovered that he'd picked out his own witness a month ago.

Mitsubishi Yuki wasn't on the will. Neither were her parents. Mumen Rider only learned of them on the day of his death and he'd only met Yuki. Nevertheless, since they weren't going with a family member anyways, somebody decided that it was only fitting for someone whose life he'd died to save should also be at the crematorium when they perform the final, ghastly deed. Circumstances being what they are, the family of that person came in her stead. So, coming from worlds apart, you can imagine that Yuki has no idea who the disheveled, hairless man in a poorly-fitted suit sitting next to her on the bench is. Understandably, she wants to know more.

"How did you know him?" Yuki asks after a terribly long moment of silence. Her parents snap their gazes her way in disapproval. One, because they don't trust the man with an utterly disreputable look. Two, because they really shouldn't be chatting idly while in the same room as a dead man. But the concrete room's stuffy and her black dress is stifling, and she has to do something to take her mind off of how uncomfortable this all is. "Old guy?"

"We worked together," the man says simply because his mind's elsewhere. His eyes – hollow and sunken – fix the coffin across the chamber, flanked by white lilies. To his disappointment, Mumen Rider hasn't kicked open the lid yet. It sounds like a perfectly in-character thing for him to do. "And we were classmates."

"Really?" Yuki asks, kicking her feet. "You knew him before he was Mumen Rider?"

"He was always Mumen Rider," The bald man scoffs. "He just didn't know it yet. First day of junior high together, he was late to class because he wasn't used to biking that far. So, when all of the other teachers and students were in their classrooms, he was in the right place at the right time to see a bunch of bullies beating up some kids for lunch money and stopped it. Tried to, anyways. Man, they beat the shit out of us..."

Yuki looks back and forth between the man and the coffin. Something sad wells up inside of her, something foreboding. And something else, too. Something like... pride, maybe? That her hero was always who she thought he was?

"It sounds like a preview of his career," Yuki says, joining the man in staring across the room. "Doing what needed doing even if it didn't do any good."

"He _did_ do good," the man says slowly. His features seem to sharpen a bit: some little pang of emotion sculpts that formless potato of a face into something human. Something that almost bristles with offense. "He saved your life, didn't he?"

Yuki flinches and pulls away from him a little. She starts to say something, but her mother quickly overrides her with, "He saved her sister. Tomoe couldn't be here..."

The man's sharp gaze switches from Yuki to her mother and he demands, "Why? Why isn't she here? She should be here to see this. She should-"

Fast and angry, the mother shouts, "Tomoe was thrown to the wolves and saw a man die to protect her! She doesn't have to see the fire take him!"

Mr. Mitsubishi puts his hand on hers and settles her down. Almost accusatorily, mostly apologetic, he looks at the bald man with hooded eyes and says, "She's in witness protection. Until she's safe, that's where she'll stay. We won't let Mumen Rider's sacrifice be in vain. We won't advertise her location out of sentiment. We're not losing her to the mobsters again for _shame._ The other families are in hiding, but we're here. We're here for him because she can't. Isn't that enough?"

The bald man and the parents stare off for a while. It's a match that the man loses. His features fall out of focus again, and soon he's just that expressionless lump of apathy. Without saying a word of apology, his eyes just slide away from theirs and stare at the coffin again. _That _hacks off the Mitsubishis more than anything.

"Don't talk to him," Yuki's mother tells her. "Just be quiet..."

This is, of course, the perfect moment for an attendant in a suit to burst into the room. The stout and dapper man slowly says, "We're ready to begin. Mitsubishi Rei? Mitsubishi Shinji? Are you ready?"

The two parents nod.

"And... Saitama... Saitama?" the man looks back and forth between the bald man and a clipboard in consternation. "Is that your first name, or your last name?"

"Man," the man in question throws up his hands. "I don't even fucking know anymore."

"Well, are you ready?" the attendant asks. All that he gets is a glare in response. "Well, alright then. Let's start..."

"Wait," Yuki says, blinking. "What about me?"

The attendant checks his list and tells her, "Who are you?"

"Mitsubishi Yuki," she tells him. "I'm-"

"I apologize, but you aren't on the list," the attendant tells her. "Legally, we can't have you in there."

Yuki looks toward the sliding steel doors near the coffin. They're just in the antechamber: the furnace lies beyond. It's just a couple of meters away, but he's telling her that it may as well be on the moon to her.

"Then why did I come?" she asks. "Why did you...?"

"Wait here," her mother tells her. "It won't be long."

Yuki protests. It doesn't do her much good. The adults mostly ignore her and soon they're wheeling the coffin through those doors and Yuki's left all alone. That's the hard part. Without anything else to focus on, without anything to take her mind off of it, that sad feeling rises up and overpowers the pride.

_He was my hero, _Yuki thinks as something hot and wet wells up in her eyes. _Now he's gone. Now he's nothing..._

"He was a lot of things to a lot of people," a smooth, powerful voice tells her. "It's okay if it takes time to sort it out."

Yuki's gaze snaps upward to meet the piercing green eyes of a tall raven-haired woman in a black dress. Anyone passingly familiar with the Hero Association will recognize her, and Yuki's a member of a fallen hero's fan club, so...

"Hellish Blizzard?" Yuki asks. "What are you...? Why are you...?"

"He's my friend," Blizzard says, taking a seat next to the young girl. "I had to be here for him."

"You can't go in," Yuki says, sniffling. "They only want people on their list to see the-"

"Oh, no," Blizzard interjects. "No, no. I know that. I already said my goodbye at the funeral, and my people are tying up the loose ends. I'm here for Saitama."

"_Saitama?" _Yuki asks. "The rude old guy? Why are you here for_ him?_ Why are you _friends _with him?"

Blizzard actually smiles at that. It takes Yuki off-guard.

"You haven't seen him at his best," Blizzard tells her. "I have. And he's hurting, just like you. You've got your friends and parents to be there for you, but Saitama doesn't have a lot of people. Mumen Rider would be there for him if he could, but..."

Blizzard shakes her head ruefully.

"Don't judge people based on how they act while grieving," Blizzard says simply. "How's your sister doing?"

The change of topic is so sudden that Yuki gets whiplash from it. She gapes like a fish for a few seconds before saying, "She's... fine... I only saw her for a little before the police took her away..."

"Oh boy," Blizzard says. She looks Yuki in the face, points at her own eyes, points towards Yuki's, and tells her, "From one girl who saw her sister get taken away to another, here's some advice: let her know that you're there. Don't force her to come hunting for you. Just let her know that you may have your own life now and can't spend all of it with her, but you're there when she needs it and that'll never change. I'm not saying that your sister will turn into the most powerful esper in the world and develop a complex, but..."

"Wait, what?"

The steel doors slide open, and everyone but Mumen Rider comes back out again. The attendant leaves in respectful silence, making no eye contact and passing like a ghost. Yuki's parents walk out, drained and emotionless, and take her by the hand to lead her home. And Saitama... well, her parents are leading her out before she knows it so she doesn't really get a good look at what Saitama does, but she catches a brief glimpse of a stony and blind gaze, and of Blizzard rushing towards him.

"Are you alright?" Blizzard asks.

"I found his bike," Saitama says. "I know that they couldn't burn it, but why not his helmet? Why did they put him in a suit? Where was his helmet? Where were his goggles? Where...?"

"It's alright, Saitama," Blizzard tells him. The voice is quieter now, through distance and sadness. "It's alright..."

"Why couldn't they...?" Saitama mumbles. He doesn't sound confused, but _lost._ Saitama's not there anymore. He's an empty suit voicing a stream of thoughts from a mind that just can't handle the disappointment anymore. "I could've spared five minutes... five minutes and he'd still be alive... I can't punch the problem away... he's on the other side and he doesn't have his helmet..."

"Let it out," Blizzard says sadly. "It's okay to feel..."

Someone starts crying, and Yuki doesn't know who it is. She just knows that the world feels a whole lot emptier.

**^V^V^V^**

Life goes on.

It has to. It can't stop and wait forever. I'm the sudden stop at the end, but you've got an awful lot of living before I come for you. And Yuki's painfully aware of just how much longer she has left.

"_Huff... huff..."_

Now, the air's not as hot and heavy as it was a couple of weeks ago when this story began, but it's still plenty hot. The mercury's going to hit 25 degrees Celsius by noon, and that's pretty hot when you never applied yourself in Physical Education and you've got to bike ten kilometers in July.

Really, she never applied herself that much in any of her classes and her parents didn't really care much. Now, though, they've got all of these concerns about her future, knowing that their daughters could disappear or die at any moment. They want them to get into good high schools and find promising careers, and Yuki can't do that with C's on her report cards. So... remedial classes it is.

They don't send the Corgi Bus for students like her. And she'd be damned if she could remember which twenty bus stops she has to take each morning to get to school through the normal routes, so biking really is the best answer. She just wishes that she got more exercise before deciding, "No, mom, I can do it myself! Don't worry!"

So, that's how Mitsubishi Yuki finds herself trundling along, out of breath, two blocks from her school.

"No, dad... _huff_..." she tells nobody in particular. "I'm just going to be an... _urgh_... idol... _huff… _No need... _huff... _no need... _huff... _no need to study...! Ugh-hff... You're too cool for school, Yuki... _wheeeeeeeze... _you can sing your way... _ugh_... to fortune and fame... _huff!_"

A block short of the target, she pretty much gives out. Sagging over the handlebars, the young girl in a sweaty uniform pulls off her helmet and drops it, letting an unseasonably cool breeze that smells like blossoms rustle her hair and take some of the oppression away. She pants a few times and, once a bit of queasiness passes, looks at a stop sign at the next intersection. A pigeon's staring at her, tilting its head in confusion.

"Coo?"

Yuki's eyes narrow.

The bird flies away like it's the easiest thing in the world.

"Don't mock me," Yuki growls. "I... _hurngh_... I can make it on my own! I... _huff... _I'm going... _urgh... _I'm going to freaking _die..._"

She pulls out her phone and stares at it few a few seconds. It's 9:14am. Classes start at 8:50, so she's making a poor first impression as it is, isn't she? Might as well make it look like she meant to do that. She can't do that if she's out of breath, so...

"Let's break," she says, laughing and hyperventilating all at the same time. "Start the day off strong! I'm... _huff..._ almost thirteen and I'm goinnnnnng to die of a h-h-heart attack... _wheeeeeeeeze... _FML, Yuki. FML."

She didn't take her phone out to use it like an actual phone, but, while she's got it in hand, she figures that she might as well do that. None of her friends are awake at this ungodly hour, and it's not like she can call her parents. Yeah, that call would go over well. _"Hey, dad! Tell mom that I'm getting an awesome start on my education by not being in class! See you in a few hours, I'm going to work in a brothel when I'm older, bye!"_

But, the more she thinks about it, the more she realizes that there's one person that she _can _call.

"I h-hope you're there," Yuki mutters as she waits for an answer. _Ring, ring, ring..._

"I speak, I speak," a little girl on the other end of the line tells her.

"Hey, Tomoe," Yuki says. "Hope you're well. I..."

"...this is Tomoe, and I can't come to the phone right now. Please leave your name, number, and a message after the beep. Thanks for calling. Goodbye!"

And then a robotic voice like a chain-smoker gargling gravel.

"_This phone is being monitored by the police. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have been advised of your rights: proceed at your own risk._"

_Beeeeeep!_

Yuki glares straight ahead, gritting her teeth for a good while before realizing that her sister's voicemail and the police are recording her aggravated silence. She wishes that there was an answer, but she guesses that voicemail's how it's going to have to be.

"Hey, Tomoe," Yuki says breathlessly, fighting to still her heart and not keel over. "It's me again. I hope that they're treating you well, wherever they have you right now. I'm fine. Late for class, you know? Nothing's really changed in that regard, hah... Be good, okay? I know that it can't be easy, but I hope you're well. I hope to see you again soon. It's just not the same without you. Maybe we can..."

_Clatter!_

You don't live in the projects for long before you learn the sound of trash cans being thrown around. Or, more accurately, someone being thrown into a trash can. There's this certain kind of crunching sound mixed with the echoing of tinny bells and a _wok wok wok _sound as the lid rolls away. The discus of metal rolls out of the faculty parking lot and falls over into the street.

"...sorry, Tomoe, gotta go!" Yuki says as chipper as can be and hangs up. She hesitates, debating whether to investigate or keep going.

"Heeeeeey, new kids!" an older boy's voice booms out after the lid. "Do you know why we brought you out behind the school?"

_Crunch!_

That's not the sound of bones breaking, but it sure must've hurt a lot, whatever it was. Still had something to do with the garbage cans, that's all that Yuki really knows. Truth be told, she doesn't want to know more. Yuki heads forward, half-riding the bicycle and half-walking it. She tries to keep her head straight and ignore the sounds coming from the parking lot. For the love of Blast, she tries not to catch sight of what's happening inside.

"No-no," Yuki hears a smaller voice – boy or girl, it doesn't matter: it just sounds hurt and scared – half-speak, half-whimper.

"We're a little short on cash," says the big guy. Somewhere in the parking lot, another boy laughs. It sounds less like a human and more like a freight train blowing its horn, he's so loud.

_It's not your problem, _Yuki says, closing her eyes and passing the gate. _Just keep going. Juuuuuust keep going. Not much that a little girl like you can do now anyhow._

"Uh," a boy's voice whimpers, followed by another boy stuttering, "Um… m-money...?"

"Can you do something to help us out?" the second boy – the one who was laughing – asks cheerily with an undertone of violence. One that basically says, 'I can bench press a truck. What do you think that I can do to your leg?'

Yuki, despite her best efforts, peeks. She sees pretty much exactly what she was expecting. Two upperclassmen – boys old enough to drink legally, by the looks of them – with their uniform sleeves ripped off stand over a trio of boys and girls about her age. They're all banged up, one of the boys has a cut on his forehead, the girl's clutching her arm, and the last boy's curled up amongst some trash cans.

"Nope!"Yuki says, quickening her pace and passing the gate without a second glance. "I'm not going to tangle with that! That looks like a mistake and I've made enough of those today! Nope, nope, nope!"

_Bang!_

"_AAAAAAAAGH!"_

There's this sound like a brick slamming into a rack of beef on a meat hook, repeated after every syllable of, "How! Much! Have! You! Got!" and accented by screams and shrieks.

"I don't have any!" the girl shouts, followed by a shriek as a dress shoe connects with her abdomen.

Time seems to slow. Yuki doesn't look back, but she doesn't go forward either. The moment of hesitation's caught up to her. What was an easy decision a moment ago becomes an ordeal. She's going to get her skull bashed in if she sticks around. She's never going to be able to live with herself if she keeps going. She has a _really pretty face _and she doesn't want it messed up. The guilt's going to haunt her all week, at least...

_Protect the head, _she tells herself. _It's the first thing that you learn when riding a bicycle, scooter, motorcycle... any kind of vehicle that leaves you exposed. It's why helmets should be mandatory._

She looks behind her. She knows that she dropped her helmet back there, but she'll be damned if she can see it. Did it roll away? Did somebody grab it? Well, there's no time to go back and search for it. The bike rack's right there, anyways. And just her luck, somebody left a perfectly good helmet and even some goggles hanging from the corner. She'll have to brush off the pink petals that cling to them, but they'll do.

"But you do at home, don't you?" the second boy demands, standing directly over the girl with a foot planted on her shoulder. One boy headlocked in each arm, the other bully chuckles. He lets them watch. He _wants _them to see this. He wants them to get the message.

The girl nods her head, shielding her face with her bloody hands. She's curled up, trying to present as small a target as she can to him. She can't muster up the courage or fire to say anything. All that comes out is this low sound halfway between a sob and a whimper.

"Do you know who we are?" the first bully asks. "We're the-"

"_**Justice Crash!"**_

_**Clonk!**_

Everybody's so focused on the sight of the beaten girl on the ground that they never see the impact. But looking up, they _do _see a goggled madwoman in a green helmet bringing a bicycle down on the young man and slamming the wheel into his gut. Everyone's too stunned to react. Especially the guy who's puking up his breakfast. Eggs and rice. Tasted better going down.

The other bully – the one with the boys in the headlock – opens his mouth to ask a question. I guess that it doesn't matter what it was because he never gets it out. It's drowned out by the shrill, angry voice of a young heroine as she rushes toward the danger.

Mumen Rider is dead.

Long live Mumen Rider.

**THE END**

**^V^V^V^**

**Author Notes**

(Originally uploaded on Thursday, July 25th, 2019)

(Replacing an epilogue posted on Thursday, July 18th, 2019)

(Re-edited and re-uploaded on Friday, January 31st, 2020)

To say that this was the original ending that I had in mind when I wrote this story is to be disingenuous. To say that it's the third or fifth is also a lie. But, I had a lot of ideas going forward into the ending, and this was certainly one of them. I originally planned to have Mumen Rider survive and make a full recovery. Then I contemplated having him die and have Tomoe take up the bike. Then I thought about maybe having him survive with a disability, and Tomoe becomes his apprentice. Then Yuki was created on almost a spur of the moment and I thought that maybe I'd have her become the next Mumen Rider. Then I thought about going back to Mumen Rider living and forgetting about Yuki because I'm kind of afraid of creating a Mary Sue. And then I thought that I'd kill him off but save the question of what happened to those he left behind for a sequel, meaning that I didn't have to worry about who takes up the helmet next. That's ultimately the one that I actually went with.

But, while I liked that ending, the fact is that it doesn't really wrap things up. It felt incomplete, and my one reviewer (Thanks again, Maelaerian!) agreed. I let it sit for most of a week before convincing myself that I had to do something about the original ending. If you missed it, it was basically the first half of this chapter, plus a whole lot of cosmology and talk about reincarnation and alluding to a failed god fighting a menace below City Z in a sequel that I'm not sure I'll ever got around to. It handily explained what happened to Mumen Rider (he basically achieved Nirvana and became one with the Universe) but just wasn't a satisfying answer. I could have some of that (just so long as I didn't go overboard) but I had to answer some questions about what happened to Tomoe and the other missing children, how the world reacted to Mumen Rider's death, and tie up one or two other plot threads left unresolved throughout the story. So, here I am at the ending.

Again.

My next story, if I write one, is going to be a continuation of this one. It's not going to follow Yuki as the second Mumen Rider, but, if there's a need for Mumen Rider to show up and do the kind of thing that Mumen Rider needs to do, then Mumen Rider's going to appear as a thirteen-year-old girl just starting her Hero's Journey. The focus is going to go back to Saitama, the One-Punch Man, and the things that he has to deal with in a world where his best friend (Mumen Rider was _everyone's _best friend) is dead. I pulled a few ideas for that sequel and put them into the epilogue here, but I think that you'll like seeing things from another angle in the future.

A couple of notes to share. The first is that Tanaka isn't, as far as I know, Mumen Rider's real name. As I went along, I realized that I couldn't get around the issue and I had to invent one for him. So, we got Tanaka. If One ever reveals that he even _has _a real name, I'll look pretty foolish. For now... well, I'm going to stick with it.

Before I go, I'd like to thank a few people. The first is Rougescribe, aka Mira, aka Cahadras, who I met through this site almost 16 years ago – half my life! – and stuck with me for the long and chaotic ride into adulthood. I may not have turned out half as functional a person without her help (which, admittedly, is still not very functional, but she tried). I'd also like to thank Ben, aka Sir Tasnica, for helping me work out many, many personal issues when things fell to pieces over the last couple of years. He didn't seem to hold it against me, which I'm thankful for beyond relief. Penultimately, I'd like to thank Maelaerian: the guy who reviewed literally every chapter that I wrote, often within hours of uploading. It's hard to write in the public forum when you don't have an audience, and Maelaerian helped assure me that there was someone out there, hopefully enjoying the story. You made it worth continuing.

Lastly, I'd like to thank everyone else who got this far. Thanks for sticking it out to the end of what is, I fully admit, a really morbid tale. Let me know if you liked the story, if you'd like to see more, or just say hello. Hello's always nice. I like hello's.

I regret to announce that this is the end. I'm going, now. I bid you all a very fond farewell. Goodbye.

Best/Dan

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

It's a long ride. It's no ride at all. Time doesn't really mean so much when you're dead.

But, when you reach the end of the world, you know it. The stars have all blinked by and everything's gone cold and dark. Tanaka the Rider Without a License has found the end of the Universe, and he steps off the boat into the beginning of the new one. He can't help but take one last look behind, and what he sees startles him.

"What is that?!" he demands, grabbing me by the shoulder and turning me around. _"What is that?!"_

It's a titan. A giant over giants, so utterly gargantuan that it towers over everything that is and ever will be. The three eyes of its head shine with all the light of the cosmos, and something greater besides. It's powerful: more powerful than anything that the universe could hope to produce. So powerful that you can only find it when you've gone outside of everything. From his vantage point, Mumen Rider sees the thing looming deep under the Universe like a centipede in the dark, fixing its brilliant gaze upon the pale blue dot that he left behind so long and a moment ago. The look on its face isn't kind.

"That?" I ask. "That's the closest thing to a god that your universe ever produced. He's waited for eons for someone to come along that can give him a worthy fight. Now Saitama's emerged in his dreams, and he's begun to stir from his slumber. He's looking forward to waking up."

The hero stares at the monster for a long time. Then he smiles.

"Saitama can kill him," Mumen Rider declares. "There's nothing that he can't defeat in one punch."

"You're right," I tell him. "But he can only kill it if he _makes_ that punch."

He stares at me, honestly nervous for the first time in a long time, and asks, "Will he?"

I smile with fragility, take his hand, and lead him beyond the end of the world.

"I don't know."


End file.
